


Me and You Alone

by Nhitori



Series: Zombies I guess [1]
Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Self-Harm, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 04:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5234912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nhitori/pseuds/Nhitori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hitori Uzune was searching.</p><p>/We're so sorry, they passed all the background checks to be suitable foster parents./</p><p>Searching for a reason.</p><p>/What are you doing here?  Don't you know it's dangerous for a cute kid like you?/</p><p>Searching for something, anything to prove...</p><p>/If you just do what I say, I can solve all of your financial problems./</p><p>Prove that humanity was worth protecting.  Worth saving.  Worth anything.</p><p>/So you're that immune boy... So sorry for your loss./</p><p>He was still coming up short.</p><p> </p><p>"But Kazuaki, I was thinking... would the apocalypse really be such a horrible thing?"</p><p> </p><p>(Here's what I did for NaNoWriMo this year... Quail BF and PapaIsa suffering, feat. Zombies. Theyre not very gruesome zombies, I cant write gore)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a saying, to always look on the bright side of things. It was a saying which very few people actually prescribed to beyond the age of thirteen, and yet it was constantly repeated back by those who were several times that age, as if they actually believed what they were saying when they claimed that optimism was in any way a healthy pursuit.

Hitori Uzune was never the kind of person to believe in such a foolish outlook on the world, nor was anybody that he spent any amount of time with. The world was filled up to the brim with terrible, awful things, and none of his friends or ‘family’ were in any sort of position to gloss those over with ‘at least’s. There was no ‘my parents are dead, but at least…’ in Heartful House, and nothing of any other severity broke that filter either. The closest they ever got to any of that was Kanta’s firm holdings in the strong-standing bravery that he associated with his father, and his own leg as well. That war was long since over, echos of it forgotten and the reason somehow already lost to time; but regardless, Kanta was certain it was for a noble cause.

But a belief in bravery was in no way an optimistic outlook on life as a whole, and even the youngest among them wouldn’t go spouting television cliches about at least having each other, because in the awful world they had all witnessed firsthand, it was foolishness to think that could not change at the slightest provocation. Just one pin in fate’s cloth stuck in the wrong spot, and the comfort they claimed could fall to ribbons. So they did not claim comfort. Not aloud, at least. Optimism was dead, replaced by some with realism and others a cynical pessimism, a level of jading which only seemed stronger as the orphans got older.

So of course the oldest would be the most jaded of them all, but he still smiled. Still gave his all to protect and cherish his younger siblings, to care for them, and to remind them that as awful as this world was, they still had a shot at it. Hitori, he did everything he could for them, and despite being the most pessimistic of any of them, found himself the sole thinker of that forbidden phrase. At least.

But it was not an at least for his own emotions, or for any of their sakes, but rather an at least for the sake of humanity on the whole. At least it happened during summer vacation. At least nobody had left the house thanks to a heat wave which made air conditioning the great lord and savior of all. At least it was only the mailman, and not some other person outside. Out on the streets, or God, at least they weren’t going to school. He immediately understood, of course, what had to have happened.

It was clear from his own experience that the strange illness that had been affecting the children was not very consistently airborn, given that even if it by some chance didn’t harm him, it certainly would be carried on him if it was. Time passed, though. More than enough time. If he had gotten anybody he tutored sick, he would have heard about it. It was a strange sickness, which seemed to lead the children to ignore injuries and need to be told to go to sleep, or else they simply wouldn’t. It was certainly confusing, but he had his sneaking suspicions, and there was really no way to crush those, regardless of how absurd they sounded at the back of his mind.

He would soon find those sneaking suspicions his friend, though, when he discovered the true nature of this mysterious illness that had swept through Heartful House. He was not the least bit shocked, but he probably should have been. No, there was no probably about it, he definitely should have been shocked to arrive home and see the floor covered with blood. However, there were only a few factors for him to note. Everybody was there. A quick glance to the living room showed Nageki reading a book calmly, and though the others who were watching television in that very same room were covered in blood themselves, nobody was missing, and nobody looked to be injured.

So Hitori did not panic. In fact, he just calmly grimaced as he picked his foot up from the floor and wrinkled his nose, “Disgusting… what have I told you about leaving puddles of blood at the door? Somebody clean this up while I start on dinner…”

“Hitori, you’ve never said anything about leaving puddles of blood at the door…” Momo responded, standing up and crossing her arms loosely, “That’s why we were waiting for you to come home to tell us what we should do about it.”

“Mop it up, that’s what you should do about it,” The fewer questions he asked, he figured, the better off he’d be. If it did turn out that one of them was a murderer, he didn’t want them to freak out over it. Murder was generally something that ought to be freaked out over, but this case was clearly an exception.

“Okay. And uh, we already sorta had dinner?” Kanta added in, causing Hitori to look at him in some level of confusion.

“They ate the mailman,” Nageki said without even looking up from what he was reading, then shrugged, “It was pretty weird. One minute they were just acting completely normal, the next they just sort of tore the dude to pieces. I’m not quite sure you can blame them for this.”

“I certainly wasn’t intending to…” He muttered, bringing a hand up to run through his hair stressfully, “But I am worried about how something like this… could happen. I shouldn’t have been out of the house, I-”

“Don’t blame yourself for it either, Hitori. That’s not helpful,” He shook his head and sighed, “You already know what happened, don’t you? It’s not such a difficult logical jump to make, is it?”

“It…” He hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside as Momo and Kanta came through with swiffers, “It must be related to how they’ve been acting lately. Some sort of sickness?”

“Yeah. Must be,” Nageki agreed, “And given how it spread to everyone else, and we’ve been living in the same conditions, we must be immune to it. Convenient.”

“Convenient indeed…” He trailed off, leaning against the wall, “For you and I, but what about them? Are they going to get better? Or are they just always going to be… like this?” He questioned, looking concerned now, “Like, if they are, I can deal with it. No big deal, honestly, just let them eat a few people sometimes, make sure they get to sleep and don’t hurt themselves too badly, but I can’t imagine they’d be all too happy like that… they can’t even go outside…”

“Hitori, you’re more concerned over their happiness than the fact they killed and ate somebody? You might need to get your priorities straight.”

“My priorities are completely straight. I do value all of your happiness over the life of some random person, at least I’m still thinking about the sake of humanity as a whole. Keeping them inside and sometimes killing people for them, that’s really nothing compared to what I could do. I could let them loose in the world, and then we’d…”

“Then we’d have a zombie apocalypse on our hands?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nageki. You’ve been reading too much, of course it’s not that. We’d just have… problems.”

“I’m not being ridiculous. Zombies have always been one of the most scientifically plausible mechanisms of fiction, after all, and everything that’s going on here seems to fit into that. I’m the one who saw them attack the mailman, Hitori. They obviously weren’t in control of themselves at all, and it’s a disease on top of that? You don’t have to call them zombies if you don’t want to, but I think it’s pretty clear that’s what they are.”

“Well…” Hitori sighed, then stood up straight, “Well then, we’ve got a few things we’ll need to figure out if we’re going to take care of them well.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Nageki agreed, glad to actually be included in the process, “For example, exactly how often do they need to eat human flesh? They’ve been acting weird for a while now, and still ate normal food, but I also can’t imagine that a disease that would make them do something like that would just let them live entirely on regular food, either…”

“Right… maybe once a week? That would make sense. As for how much they need to eat when they do, I can’t imagine it’s actually as much as they did eat. Between all of them, I could probably stretch a single person out to at least five meals, presuming they only need a small amount of it…” Hitori mused, hardly even thinking about just how strange it was that he was legitimately figuring out how to feed corpses to children. He didn’t really want to dwell on the fact that he was doing that; he’d just continue to think about it from an entirely professional perspective. He was only meeting the dietary needs of the orphans that he was basically in charge of. There were adult caretakers… once… but as soon as it became clear that Hitori could handle it, they just sort of left, only to be heard from in the manner of half the bill payments. It was a good thing nobody was overly attached to them.

“Mhm,” Nageki nodded, “I don’t think the disease is quite smart enough to distinguish amounts of flesh, as long as it’s somewhat substantial… In any case, I’ll leave the rest of this up to you. You’re the one who wants to bother dealing with them, after all. I just live here. I’ll babysit for you, though.”

“Fair enough,” Hitori shrugged at Nageki’s words, “I wouldn’t want you to worry yourself over it, anyway. It doesn’t really concern you. Obviously we’re both immune, and they’re going to ignore us both too when it comes to the whole dismembering thing… We’ll just have to be careful not to carry the disease out of here with us, and no inviting anyone over unless you really dislike them.”

“Mm, I’ll keep that in mind. Who would I even invite over, Hitori? All my friends live here already,” Nageki mumbled as he focused in on the book he was reading once more, “And you hardly let me go outside as it is, so I can’t say that’s the sort of thing I really need to worry about.”

If that was a passive-agressive jab at Hitori’s ‘parenting’ skills, he didn’t notice. Rather, he just went into the kitchen to begin work on dinner for himself and Nageki, given that they were the only two who didn’t make a gruesome feast of the local post earlier that day. So he didn’t make anything too big, just a couple of sandwiches. He did try to save the nicer meals for days when everyone was going to be eating. Momo and Kanta both cooked too, occasionally, under very close supervision from Hitori to be sure they didn’t burn themselves or get anybody sick with salmonella or anything like that.

As he made the sandwiches, and later as he ate, he contemplated the current situation just a little bit more. It was… well, it was nothing, really. Just a little bit of a setback in the grand scheme of caring for his adoptive siblings, just a little complication. A small difference in the way he would go about doing things, but really it was hardly more difficult at all. So what, he would occasionally need to kill a few people? He’d do absolutely anything for them, for his family. For his kids.

Anything at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Hitori bought a freezer.  
It was an impulsive purchase, of course, and not really anything to think too hard about in normal situations. Especially given that it would surprise nobody if Heartful House only had a refrigerator with no freezer attached or outside. As it was, this was the truth, and the refrigerator was actually one of those half-height fridges that people often used to store their beer, but he wasn’t going to start using it for frozen meals either. He’d perfected the art of cooking on a budget, and it was certainly tastier to make pasta on three dollars than to heat up a thing of pre-prepared pasta for the same price. Hoppe was actually very good at finding coupons in the newspaper, too, so as soon as she’d volunteered to take up the responsibility it became particularly easy on him.

In any case, the purpose of the freezer was a much more nefarious one than anybody would, at that point, expect. It was still summer, so there was no suspicion to be had on the lack of orphans on the schoolgrounds. They were all distance students, of course, but they did go to school occasionally. Well, not anymore; but then, nobody had the opportunity to notice just yet. By the time he bought the freezer there had only been the one missing mailman, and that couldn’t possibly be linked to the poor orphanage, now could it? The freezer wasn’t suspicious at all, and yet, it was completely suspicious.

Hitori hooked it up in the basement, and bought a lock for the basement door as well, the best idea clearly being to keep the body parts away from the ones who would be eating them. He wanted to stretch the corpses out as long as he could, and if there was the opportunity for any of the younger kids to sneak into the freezer for a snack (read, to eat everything in there) he would certainly need to kill more people. He didn’t particularly want to kill THAT many people. He didn’t quite have qualms about murder, if it was for their sake, but he would rather not raise too much suspicion around town when word finally started to get around about mysterious disappearances up at Heartful House.

And that was that, really. He was completely prepared, then, for the next time he’d have to prepare something for them. Of course, he also had to buy a couple of baby gates. Those weren’t particularly helpful in the case of Kanta and Momo, of course, but it would keep the younger ones away from the front door, and hopefully the others would just follow suit. They never had packages delivered that needed signing for, so postal workers were generally safe. That one incident must have just sprung from one of them deciding to open the door to see what was going on, only to see before them a non-immune human and spring into some sort of frenzy-

But even as he thought about that potential, Hitori found himself confused. The blood was inside the house, after all. He couldn’t imagine in that frenzied state that the orphans would have the common sense to bring the man inside before mutilating him; so the mailman must have, for some reason, stepped inside the house, and that idea planted seeds of doubt and fear in his heart, alongside a boot with which he kicked himself for being out when that had happened. He couldn’t imagine somebody walking inside the house in a job that didn’t require such a thing would have any sort of good intentions, and he cringed to think of the possibilities of what could have happened if the children /hadn’t/ eaten the potential assailant.

But again, that was something he had to put into the past. If he had his way, he would never leave any of them home alone, but Kanta, Momo, and Nageki were all old enough. Nageki was consistently competent enough too, compared to the other two older children who now had a distinct lack of self-preservation instincts. He trusted Nageki with the responsibility, a fact which he seemed grateful for. It was a welcome change from Hitori’s usual habits of not even trusting Nageki to keep himself out of trouble, let alone the younger siblings. And Hitori couldn’t just stay with them all the time. He needed to work, needed to provide for them.

Speaking of, after buying the freezer and getting the basement locked up, he had to motor to get to his job. He had to tutor somebody who was actually in his grade of school for once; he figured it would be a welcome change from the middle and elementary school children who would pitch a temper tantrum the minute they didn’t understand any of the concepts they were being taught. Better somebody who couldn’t wrap his head around the pythagorean theorem than somebody who burst into tears the minute anyone mentioned subtraction, right?

When he rang the doorbell for the house, however, nobody came to the door. Confused, he rang it again and listened closely. It definitely did make a sound, but there was still no answer, so he brought up a hand to knock on the door. Before he was able to knock, however, somebody finally opened the door and he found himself face to face with an incredibly unkempt woman. She looked like the sort of person who would eat a bowl of nachos seasoned with canned tuna and clementines, and by that thought Hitori meant she was eating exactly that as she opened the door. He eyed it in confusion, not even making eye contact with her or saying anything. The smell of it was rank, as if the nachos were a little over six days old. Maybe it was rude of him to pay more attention to her confusing food than to her, but he was too taken aback to process that potential.

“You’re here to tutor Kaz, arentcha?” Her voice certainly suited both her appearance and her strange eating habits, sounding both rough and careless, and when Hitori looked further into the house he could see that it was a terrible mess, and the television was playing some reality show about three year olds in beauty pageants. This woman was certainly… something.

“I, uh…” He started, then pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and checked it, “You mean, Kazuaki Nanaki? Yeah. I’m here to tutor him in math and physics.”

“No good son of a…” She started, then looked shocked and stuffed a nacho into her mouth, realizing that she was about to insult herself with that statement, “I mean, deadbeat kid. He’s failing everything except English, and his grades in that aren’t too hot either. I’m relying on you to pull him up and get him to make something of himself, right Mr. Tutor?”

“Right… Can you direct me to where he is…?” Hitori asked, continuing to try his best to be polite despite a burning desire to call this woman out on her hypocrisy. As far as he could tell she was pretty deadbeat herself, so he couldn’t imagine she was setting a very good example for her son, nor did he appreciate that she seemed to look upon his failure in school with such disdain. It put a bad taste in his mouth, though not as bad a taste as the food she was eating probably would.

“Yes, yes, he’s right in there,” She nodded, pointing off into another room, and Hitori nodded as well as he walked past her and into the other room. He opened the door and immediately noticed that aside from the clothes scattered about and a few dirty dishes, this room was significantly less disgusting than the other one. The only thing that made him cringe to look at was a soda cup which had soaked through its bottom and stained the desk it was sitting on.

Needless to say, the person in the room didn’t make him cringe either, thank God. He didn’t look like he’d showered in three days, but his mother looked like she hadn’t showered in three weeks, so it was a marked improvement. Plus, the guy seemed to have a slight sense of style, not wearing mismatched patterns like her, and he’d possibly brushed his hair sometime in the last fourty-eight hours. Already seeming to Hitori to be more competent than the woman who’d opened the door. Besides, whatever he was doing on his phone was flashing the word ‘Perfect’ several times, so that was mildly impressive, though Hitori had no idea what it actually was. He waited until the thing was finished to announce his presence, “Hey. You’re Kazuaki Nanaki, right? I’m here to tutor you.”

“Ehhhh??” Kazuaki sounded shocked as he let out the overexaggerated sound, scrambling to put his phone in sleep mode then throwing it across the room, as if trying to hide what he had been doing.

“...What was that about?” Hitori asked quizzically as he went and picked up the phone, checking it for damage and relieved to find that it wasn’t cracked as he handed it back to Kazuaki, “Are you not supposed to be playing that game or something?”

“I…” He trailed off sheepishly as he took the phone back, lip wobbling, “Y-You’re here to tutor me, right? So you’re all smart and stuff… and you’d probably think that this game is a big waste of time… and get mad at me for playing it when I’m failing my classes…”

“Hey, I wouldn’t do that,” Hitori assured him with a slight chuckle, “Besides, you seem to be pretty good at it, so it can’t be that big a waste of time. If it’s something you enjoy doing, then that’s a good way to spend your time. You got a… full combo, whatever that means, so I have to say that I’m kind of impressed.”

“R-Really?” He asked, still seeming confused and afraid.

“Yeah. You had to like, hit all those things with your fingers without missing any, right? They were moving pretty fast, there’s no way I could do something like that,” He pulled over another chair from the desk with the soda to sit next to Kazuaki at the desk without the soda stains, “Just cause I’m smart doesn’t mean I’m worth half a cent at rhythm games.”

“I’m not so great at it…” Kazuaki mumbled, “I can’t even tier events because I’m really bad at time management… I just pour money into it so I can play the gacha a lot. The song I just full comboed was a super hard daily, but I had to use my perfect lock team to do it, and my perfect lock team is all idolized URs… back when my teams were all normals and rares, I failed songs all the time…”

“I may not understand a word that you’re saying, but I still think it’s interesting that you’re good at that game. And hey, maybe if I help you get better at math, you will have the time management skills to… tier events,” Hitori offered, “Why don’t you show me the game? A good motivation for learning is to think about how you can apply it to the things that you like, so I’ll start by teaching you math that you can apply to this game.”

“Whaa? That’s… you can do that?” He questioned, looking totally amazed.

“Yeah, I do it all the time with the younger kids I tutor, though with them it’s more like how to do subtraction with dinosaurs,” He shrugged, “So let’s take a look…” He took the phone once Kazuaki got the app open, and started looking over it, then started explaining the various ways math could be applied to the game, starting with simple division for the experience points and LP before moving onto event prediction, quickly getting the gist of the game as he worked on attaching math to it. Kazuaki seemed to be following along pretty well too, until Hitori got through all the things he could talk about relating to the game and started using those concepts as jumping-off points for a few other things.

“I… I don’t understand this at all, Uzune!” He frowned, then sniffled, and Hitori was hit the sinking realization that this would not in fact be a break from the small children who threw a fit when they didn’t get a concept after all. That was… well, it was quite a shame, but he could deal with it. He wasn’t one to give up, and he did have experience dealing with people whose emotions were so fragile that the smallest bit of confusion could lead to such reactions.

“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to understand it yet. Why don’t we take a look at your summer homework, and I’ll make it simpler for you? You have a few basic skills now thanks to what I was able to connect to that game in our first hour, but what’s really important is that you get caught up on your actual curriculum,” He offered with a soft smile, “And don’t worry, I won’t get angry with you if you get confused. We’ll take it slow and help you figure out everything you need to know, all right?”

“O-okay…” Kazuaki nodded tearfully as he went to track down his backpack, and pulled out his summer work packet, putting it down on his desk. Hitori recognized it as something he’d done a while back, being in the advanced math program. The problems themselves were just about as complex between the different levels, the advanced program just moved between topics a lot faster, making him an ideal math tutor even for people in his own grade in the lower level.

“All right, so, this topic is a little funny to work with. You might think that it’s really complicated because the problems look huge, but let’s go over the order of operations and simplification first, then revisit some of these and see if you understand them any better then, all right?” He asked as he pointed at some of the problems, then opened a new page in the notebook he’d used for the game-related things earlier. Kazuaki had surprisingly done fairly well with the example problems, so it seemed that he was good at executing the concepts when he got his head wrapped around him. That made it a little bit easier to teach him.

“You’re such a good teacher, Uzune…” He smiled a bit, wiping his eyes, “All my teachers at school just explain the same things over and over and I don’t understand them…”

“Yeah, a lot of the time teachers don’t realize that you might need a refresher on some of the related topics rather than just getting help on the current issue,” He shrugged, closing his eyes. his intention had been to just open them right back up again, but clearly that didn’t come to fruition, given that moments later he was woken up by having his shoulder shaken, and when he looked up Kazuaki was crying. Again.

“H-Hey, are you okay?? I was really worried! You just fell asleep like that! After two minutes I realized you were sleeping so I woke you up, but I thought you had died or something…! Why did you do that, Uzune…?” He seemed genuinely concerned, but Hitori just looked back at him blankly, as he often did just after being woken up.

“Eh?” He questioned, taking a moment to process the information before shaking his head and sitting up straight, “I’m sorry, that just happens sometimes. I just… fall asleep. I’m not sure why it happens, but it’s okay, it’s never happened in any situation I really need to pay attention, like while I’m cooking or swimming… mostly…”

“Mostly?? That seems really dangerous…” Kazuaki frowned, seeming worried about him, “Have you been getting enough sleep? You can take a nap if you want to… or you can go home and get to bed early so you’re well-rested… there’s still a few weeks of summer vacation left, so I don’t need to get all caught up on the topics for a little while yet…”

“Oh, no, I’ve been getting plenty of sleep. I get more sleep than I could ever possibly need, but I still fall asleep at inopportune times. I’m very sorry about that, but I can’t imagine this is the last time I’ll fall asleep during a tutoring session with you. If that bothers you, you can get a new tutor…” He offered.

“No, that’s okay, I don’t mind, I was just scared! I don’t want a different tutor… You’re nice, and the stuff that you say makes a little bit of sense, sometimes, which is better than the last tutor I had…”

“Is the last tutor you had the reason you thought I’d get mad at you for playing a mobile game?” Hitori asked, and Kazuaki nodded, to which he sighed, “That’s not a good way of tutoring somebody at all. All you’ll accomplish by ragging on someone’s interests like that is discouraging them from doing the thing they like, and from learning. It’s completely ineffective.”

“I’d say… I obviously didn’t learn anything at all… but I’m learning some stuff with you, Uzune, so I think that’s really great…” He gave another wobbly smile, crossing his arms, “I might actually become a little bit competent at life and such, with your help! But… my mom’s only going to pay for a few tutoring sessions and I don’t think that’s going to be enough… I can pay you, though…!”

“Neither do I, honestly. No offense,” He sighed, thinking for a moment, “You don’t have to dig into your own pockets to pay me. That’d just be rude of me, to agree that you need to get more tutoring then expect you to pay for it yourself after your mother paid for the first few sessions… So how about this. I’ll give you some free tutoring, if you teach me how to play this game.”

“What… really?” Kazuaki asked, confused by the offer. Who would make a deal like that?

“Yeah, really. It seems pretty interesting, after all, and I do want to help you out some more. There’s a lot more in place to help out ailing elementary school kids, so I don’t really feel bad taking their parents’ money. I can help them improve faster, but it’s not like they could flunk out completely if I can’t teach them. You, on the other hand… if I stopped tutoring you when your mother stopped paying for sessions, I’d feel like I was forsaking you, and I’m not about to do that.”

Much to his surprise, Kazuaki started tearing up again, but he was still smiling, “That… That’s so nice of you…! How is someone so nice real?? U-Uzune, I’m not so sure that you’re real anymore…”

“I’m completely real. If I’m really nice, it’s just because I’m overcompensating,” He shrugged.

“What do you mean…?” Kazuaki asked, biting his thumbnail.

“Nothing. Well, maybe I’ll tell you someday, but today is certainly not that day. We only just met after all, so I can’t trust you with my secrets yet,” He smirked, “Maybe I’m just trying to put up an air of mystery to get you interested in me. After all, if we become friends, you’ll want to impress me by taking my tutoring to heart, and we’ll both be up by one friend. Mutually beneficial, don’t you think?”

“Eh… Yes…?” Kazuaki responded, not quite following anymore, but he may as well agree. The sentence made a little bit of sense, the bit about becoming friends, and that would definitely be nice. It would be /really/ nice, actually, to have a friend. The last time he had any friends at all was back in middle school, and they just sort of slowly left him. The final straw for the last one was meeting his mom, so he wasn’t quite as scared that Hitori would get close to him only to disappear, if they became friends, because he’d already met his mom.

“Great,” He said brightly, then checked the time by pushing the button on Kazuaki’s phone, “Session’s just about over, and I’ve got to get home to make dinner so I can’t stick around right now, but I’ll see you around soon. You’ve got another tutoring session this same time next week, but is it all right if I come by a bit early?”

“Mmhm… That’s okay… If you really want to?” He said slowly, “My house isn’t the most pleasant place to be, though… Why would you wanna spend more time here?”

“Like I said, you have to teach me how to play Love Live,” He chuckled as he stood up, “You can keep that notebook, by the way. Try not to lose it, we’ll be using it more next week.”

“Okay…” Kazuaki nodded, watching Hitori as he left, “See you next week, Uzune…”

“Of course,” He nodded, waving as he walked out the door, only to find himself in another encounter with Kazuaki’s mother.

“So, let me guess. He refused to learn a thing? That no-good…”

“Actually, Ms Nanaki, he learned quite a bit today. Some percentages, division, even future trend prediction, as well as going over some more basic concepts to help him grasp his curriculum in classes. Next week I’ll expand on that, and by the time school starts up again he should be able to handle it just fine, or at least better than before.”

“You mean… he didn’t give you a hard time…?” She questioned, seeming very baffled.

“Oh no, not at all. I’m used to tutoring younger people than him, so even though he’s a little bit emotionally immature, I know how to deal with it,” He assured her, then pushed past, “I’d love to stay and chat, Ms Nanaki, but I’m on a schedule. I have to get home and make dinner.”

“Make… dinner? That doesn’t take long at all, I’m sure you could stick around a little longer. Tell me how you got that dumb kid to learn math, I wanna know.”

“Actually, making dinner takes quite a bit of time in my house, and there’s some people younger than me home alone right now, I really don’t like leaving them on their own for so long, so I’d really appreciate if you stopped holding me up,” And with that, he got to the door and left before she could come up with some other excuse to make him stick around any longer. If he wasn’t going to stay longer with the actually tolerable person in the household, he sure as hell wouldn’t do it for her either.

Once outside, he made his way back home quickly, walking because the bus schedule was markedly inconvenient for him at this juncture. Car payments were something they couldn’t really afford at Heartful House; he had to work hard enough as it was to pay for the heating, air conditioning, and phone bills. He’d managed to get a bunch of assorted phones for free from a thrift store, because they all had small flaws that turned people off of purchasing them. He then got the cheapest phone plans he could, all he really needed out of these was to have a means of contact between the orphans. They were not social tools. However, they were not bad phones either. For all their cracks, or memory issues, they could still connect to the internet when there was wifi available, and he was pretty sure that his at least could handle one video game.

By the time he got back to Heartful House, the sun was beginning to set, which was actually somewhat of a relief, given that it made the walk a bit cooler. However, he particularly disliked the idea of having his family home alone when night fell, so he did quicken his step. Once he got back, he shouted a greeting out into the house, and received the appropriate number in return. Once assured in that fact, he went into the kitchen and started making dinner. A bit later Pyonpyon walked into the room, pulling up a stool to watch him cut vegetables.

“Hi Hitori!” He said brightly as he leaned on the counter, “How was your work?”

“Work was interesting. Today I was actually teaching somebody who was my age, instead of your age,” He answered.

“Woah!” He seemed amazed, “Are you gonna make a friend?? I’ve never heard of you having a friend!”

“I might make a friend, who knows? I normally just don’t get the chance to talk to people my age, but when I do I tend to get along with them. I think there’s a few people who would consider me their friend if you asked them, but not a high enough level friend to think of inviting me to anything,” He shrugged, “And well, you won’t be meeting this guy anyway.”

“Why not? Are you worried I will use my super secret powers and discover he’s a bad person?” Pyonpyon asked, pushing his fingers against his temples.

“No, nothing like that. I’m worried you’d eat him,” He answered with a slight chuckle as he moved onto boiling some water.

“Oh, right,” He blinked as he hopped off the stool, “I sorta forgot about that.”

“Well, that’s a good sign. That means it isn’t a constant craving,” Hitori shrugged, “You have to make sure to tell me when you do need it, though, okay? I don’t want you getting any sicker than you already are.”

“No problem!” He laughed, saluting Hitori, “I’m gonna go play with Kanta now!” 

“All right, have fun,” He nodded with a smile. Talking to any of them served as a perfect reminder. He was doing this for them, they were why he bought the freezer. Why he would be… killing people. It was more disturbing to him how undisturbed he was over this fact, than the fact he would be killing people itself. He was completely unbothered by the thought of murder, and that was something to be bothered about. But it was for the people he cared about most in the world, and he didn’t care a bit for the strangers he would be slaughtering for them. A lack of empathy for anyone uninvolved in his affairs… it was something concerning.

He wouldn’t dwell on it, though. He would just do what he had to. Carry on as usual, with the added sprinkling of brutal murder. No big deal.


	3. Chapter 3

It was around a week later that he needed to actually put that into action, and he’d gotten all his thinking on it done in small bursts along the way. By the time Pyonpyon informed him of a craving for human flesh, he’d completely worked out a plan.

The first one who’d died… may have had unclear intentions, but unclear as the intentions were, they couldn’t have been good. There was no reason the mailman should have come inside the house, and Hitori had made the decision that, whenever possible, he would stick to that trend. He would make meals of the sort of people who didn’t quite deserve to be left loose in the world. Unfortunately, to accomplish this, he would have to leave them home alone not only at night, but fairly late at night…

He informed them all to stay in the living room and keep an eye out. If anybody but him walked in, he informed Nageki, sic the others on them. Then he left, made his way downtown, then found an area that was best described as shady. It was nerve-wracking, of course, to use himself as bait, but there was no way he’d use anyone else, and besides. It wasn’t like he was unprepared. Of course, he wasn’t exactly completely prepared either. He was a small teenager, and honestly quite the weakling. He had to rely on speed and agility to get this done, to be able to turn the tables on whoever targeted him.

Somebody would definitely target him.

He’d mastered the art of moving inconspicuously yet with confidence, to put up a particular air to make him seem un-muggable, or anything else an unsavory character might approach a teenaged boy for; And he discarded all of that completely. For once in his life, he wanted to be approached by somebody with malicious intent. Opening himself up to attack like this might not be the best way to gauge if somebody would do such things normally, or just make an impulsive decision based on just how much of an easy target he was; but to really see into the hearts of those he would be killing was just too much work. To even bring morals into it in the first place was proving to be difficult.

In the effort of letting his guard down, however, he found himself in a bit of predicament. While leaning against the wall in the dark, trying his best to look less aware of his surroundings than he was, he was continuously beginning to nod off. The first four times he was able to catch himself and pinch his own arm to wake himself up again, but the fifth time it seemed he wasn’t able to do such a thing, because while he did wake up to a pain in his arm, it was a much rougher one and a much stronger compression than that of two fingers. Jolting awake, he saw in front of him… something. No, this person, he couldn’t call him that. To acknowledge the humanity would cause him to falter. This person had to remain as a faceless beast who had grabbed his arm and left hot breath in his face.

With his one free arm, he sent his hand diving into his pocket and pulled out a cloth. It was soaked, and smelled sweet; he did like sweet things, but never expected that opinion would manifest in such a way. Regardless, he didn’t have the time to hesitate at the moment, bringing the cloth to the unknown being’s face, holding it there until the grip relaxed and they fell to the floor. Hitori stepped closer and pressed the cloth against their nose further, pulling out some duct tape to keep it there. Better safe than sorry, and besides, it wasn’t like he cared about the potential side effects of dosing someone too much. All he needed was a corpse.

Speaking of, he leaned down and pulled out the case he’d brought along and stashed behind a dumpster. One of his other recent sketchy purchases, along with the freezer and the chloroform. Well, on their own only one of those things rose any flags, but when combined it was certainly nothing short of intimidating. No, intimidating wasn’t quite the word. Unsettling. Deeply unsettling. In any case, he was glad he’d sprung for the larger case, because this person had a pretty big frame and wouldn’t have fit in anything smaller.

Then, he set to work dragging the case, because he certainly couldn’t lift it. Dragging a case along, however, was not altogether suspicious when considering his size, and the number of things that could be in a case. A trunk like that, could be any number of things. Instruments, technology, all variety of large things that needed to be transported in a sturdy container. Of course, there was the large chance that until he got away from this particular neighborhood, the assumption might be that it was drugs; though it was also the sort of area where that assumption wouldn’t endanger him much.

Of course, it was slow going, to drag such a heavy thing along with him, and god was it loud as it scraped against the sidewalk. The area wasn’t too terribly far away from Heartful House, but while dragging a case with a dead body inside, the distance definitely seemed a Hell of a lot longer. He was barely a third of the way back when somebody actually decided to talk to him, “Uzune…? Is that you…?”

He looked up to see none other than Kazuaki Nanaki there. They’d had another tutoring session the previous day, mutual tutoring in this case. Hitori had picked Umi as his starting girl, and Kazuaki had actually started to pick up some of the more relevant mathematical concepts he was being presented with. And now he’d run into Hitori dragging a case around at an hour somewhere close to midnight. Of course, Hitori’s first reaction was worry, “Yeah… what are you doing out this late…?”

“Oh, uh, well…” Kazuaki shrugged, holding the side of one arm with the other, “My job runs pretty late sometimes… And this is one of those nights… I’ve just been standing here for twenty minutes now trying to work up the nerve to walk home.”

“What sort of job keeps you out this late?” He asked, standing up straight, though keeping a hand on the case.

“Actually, I do some stage tech stuff for a local theatre… I just move whatever things people tell me to move…” He chuckled a bit sheepishly, “I guess if there’s one thing I’m kind of good for, it’s being strong. I was just sort of born with it, I guess… somebody else would probably do better with it though, cause I’m not even athletic at all…”

“I see. So whatever they were doing tonight ran late?” He questioned.

“Well actually it was… always going to be this late, but I got scheduled to work and I couldn’t just not go…” He mumbled.

“Well, how about this. You help me lug this case back to my house, and don’t ask any questions, and I’ll walk you home after?” He was a bit hesitant to ask for help, but he certainly couldn’t just continue dragging this, nor could he leave Kazuaki to attempt the dark walk home on his own.

“W-Would you really do that for me?” He asked, taking a step forward and… completely lifting the case off the ground, “Hey, it’s not even that heavy… really unwieldly though… big rectangles are hard to get a good grip on, but I can do it…!”

“Of course. Honestly, I think it’s not the most fair trade out there, so I’m more shocked you agreed to help me. Thanks for that, though. When we get back to my house I’ll take it inside, turn on the porch light, then be right back out to walk you home,” He started walking in the direction of Heartful House, and Kazuaki shifted the case to rest more on his back as he followed after him.

“Why don’t I just take it in your house for you?” He asked, trying to be as helpful as he could, “Most people just make fun of me for being scared of the dark, so it’s a really nice surprise that you’d help me get home instead… So it’s definitely a fair trade.”

“No, no… You wouldn’t want to go inside my house,” He waved a hand dismissively with a slight chuckle.

“You’ve been inside my house… Which is really gross…” He didn’t seem to be arguing, but was only confused, “What could possibly be worse…?”

“It’s not gross, it’s dangerous,” He smirked, “I live with monsters.”

“Ha ha…” Kazuaki laughed weakly, “Great joke Hitori, what’s the actual reason…?”

“Who says I’m joking?”

“Nothing… I just hope that you are.”

“Well, regardless of if I am or not, it is dangerous for you to go inside my house, so I’d really rather if you didn’t. I don’t want my best student getting hurt, after all,” He smiled at him, walking backwards now that he was back on the streets that he knew a lot better and could probably navigate with his eyes closed.

“I’m your… best student…?” Kazuaki asked, wide-eyed, and those wide eyes quickly filled up with tears, “W-Wow Uzune… I thought I was a really bad student so that really… Means a lot to me…”

“Of course you’re my best student. You’ve improved by what I could only refer to as leaps and bounds, honestly. When I started teaching you, you could barely even do simple division. Two tutoring sessions later and you’re already getting caught up to your curriculum. We can start filling in the general blanks pretty soon. What I’m really curious about is your grade in English, though. What’s the deal with that?” He asked, “I mean, if you just didn’t get it, your grade would definitely be lower than a C minus.”

“Well…” Kazuaki mumbled, looking down at the ground, “I’m good at English, but a lot of the time I just… don’t do my work… So I feel really bad, Hitori, that you’re working so hard to help me out but I probably won’t get any better than the low side of average because I’m so bad at doing homework…”

“Lots of people are bad at doing homework. School system’s got a lot of issues, thinking it can force you through eight hours of the day then go ahead and expect you to do even more on your own time? People have got things to do, places to be. Honestly, as much as I may dislike my distinct lack of social exposure, it’s much easier to be a distance student.”

“A… distance student…?”

“Right. I’m enrolled in school, but I rarely actually go there. I do all my work from home, for the most part. I’m just too busy with work and other things to go to school every day, but it has its drawbacks. I don’t meet a lot of people, so I don’t make a lot of friends. Not that I mind much, but just think about it. Have you ever seen me around the school? If I hadn’t been hired to tutor you, we wouldn’t have even met.”

“No… But I thought that was just because you’d be in all the smart person classes while I’m in the… not smart classes,” He whined.

“Nah, I’m actually only in the advanced track for math and physics. I didn’t do so hot in biology, for example, I couldn’t tell you where in the body a single one of your organs is. I barely even passed the final, I scribbled ‘I have no clue’ on the entire labeling section. To this day, I haven’t the slightest idea where in the body you’d find the liver, or anything else for that matter.”

“Oh… Well that makes me feel a little better… I got a D plus in biology…”

“I got a D minus. See, I’m not the genius you think I am.” He joked, then looked up, “Seems we’re here. Let me get that thing inside, and I’ll be right back,” As soon as Kazuaki put the case down he took it and brought it inside, making sure not to let the door be open for too long. He dragged it to the basement door, unlocked it, then just straight up tossed the case down the stairs and ran after it, closing the door behind himself. He’d deal with butchering it up some more later on, but for now he just cut off the head. That was certain to kill them, after all, unlike anything else which could cause pain upon waking up. Careful not to get any blood on himself, he ran back up the stairs, locked the door, and tossed the head in the living room, “Dinner’s served. I gotta go back out for a little while, be good while I’m gone. Get to bed when you’re done eating!” And with that, he went back outside to find Kazuaki standing directly under the porch light.

“Ah! Uzune, you’re back,” He smiled at him, “Thanks again for walking me home, but are you sure that you’ll be okay coming back here on your own after? I mean… I’m only scared to walk home because I’m scared of the dark, and ghosts, but you’re kind of…”

“Small?” He finished, “Well, yes, but I can carry myself well. I’ll be fine, I’ve walked home alone in the dark plenty of times in my life.”

“Well I wasn’t going to say small, but yes,” He was, for some reason, now blushing, “As long as you’re sure you’ll be safe, though… if you’re worried at all, you could always spend the night at my house. My mom really doesn’t care about anything I do, she just assumes I will always disappoint her, and then I do.”

“If she expects disappointment, wouldn’t she not be disappointed when you did disappoint her, since she wasn’t expecting anything better than disappointment? Expecting disappointment is kind of a paradox, I think,” He shrugged, “Thanks for the offer, but I really don’t like being away from the house for too long. I have a lot of adoptive younger siblings, and they need a lot of looking after too. It’s bad enough to leave them home alone as much as I do.”

“So you’re not only really nice Uzune, but you care that much about your family too…? You’re such a good person…” 

“I wouldn’t say that,” He shrugged again, looking up at the sky, “But then, trying to distinguish between good and bad people is pretty fruitless in the first place… with so many good things and bad things that people can do, good things for bad reasons, bad things for good reasons, trying to apply ethical guidelines to anybody is futile.”

“I guess you’re right…” Kazuaki trailed off, then started crying again, “But then where does that leave me…? I don’t do good things or bad things… for any reasons… so I’m just a nobody…”

“I don’t think so,” Hitori responded simply, “That’s just because you don’t interact with people a lot, and really, I think it might be better to live as neutrally as you do. You don’t have to worry about getting judged for your actions as much that way, or thinking too hard about morals. So maybe if you think about it that way, it makes you one of the only actual certified Good Persons out there.”

“Huh…” He muttered, “I never really thought of it that way…”

“Most people don’t,” Hitori responded, dropping his shoulders and continuing to peruse the night sky, “This world we’re in, it really jumps at the chance to hurt people. It tells people who are only doing their best that they’re useless. It tells us to put these labels on actions, to act like morality is really as simple as television for children makes it out to be. It turns terrible people into heroes, sometimes, if it means that they can villainize more people by doing so. Honestly, Kazuaki, I think that this world is truly, truly awful.”

“...Uzune?” He questioned, then shook his head. Hitori had called him by his first name, so he would do the same, “Hitori, are you okay…?”

“Yeah,” He sighed, turning to look at him, and though he was just hit again by the same horrible feeling in the knowledge that it was entirely the fault of this world that the person before him felt for even a second that he could be considered worthless, “I’m okay. It’s such an awful world, but there’s so many things I still have to do in it. So you don’t have to worry about me, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon…”

“Hitori, I never thought…” Kazuaki trailed off, “That you’d be the type of person to think that…”

“I never would’ve either, honestly,” He shook his head and chuckled, “Well, I’m certainly not the type, but maybe it’s just in anticipation of the pain I’ll feel in the future. If I already know that everything around me is garbage, it won’t hurt so much,” He then locked eyes with Kazuaki, “So I’d like it if you forgot about this. Next week, during our tutoring session, you’ll be Nanaki to me again, and I’ll be Uzune. I never said any of this. Well, unless you start thinking you’re useless. If that happens, remember everything I said. You’re not worthless. It’s this awful world’s fault that you feel that way, and you’ve done nothing wrong,” He stopped walking, “Look, we’re at your house. See you next week… Nanaki.”

“Right…” He agreed softly, then went inside, leaving Hitori standing on his own to walk back to Heartful House and get to bed. This was far too late for anybody to still be out and about, let alone somebody as easily exhausted as him. When he arrived home the others had finished eating and had gone to sleep, excluding Nageki, who of course did not partake in the eating of a human head, nor was he as keen to sleep when he was told to.

“So, what were you doing anyway?” Nageki asked when the door closed behind Hitori without even looking up.

“Walking somebody home. He was scared of the dark. I made a deal with him, he helped me get the case back here. I didn’t exactly think that bit through, but I couldn’t just drag the poor postman inside and kill him. I’m not quite that nasty, I had to find somebody who deserved to die. Speaking of, I have to get down there and get the freezer stocked before it starts stinking down there.”

“I’ll go with you so we can talk.”

“Nageki, I’m not letting you watch me take a human corpse to pieces. You’ve already seen too many gruesome things for your own good, and this crosses a line,” He was clearly not in any way going to budge on this topic.

“I’ll bring my book with me and just look at it,” Nageki offered.

“No. Not a good compromise,” He shook his head, “What do you even want to talk to me about, anyway?”

“Well, for one, the fact that you had somebody carry a case with a body in it back to the house for you. Don’t you think that’s just the slightest bit dangerous? If you get arrested, it would be absolutely horrible. The zombies can’t be left here by themselves after all, so there has to be the two of us if we want to take care of them. I think you need to be more careful.”

“I am being careful. Kazuaki Nanaki isn’t going to ask any questions, he thinks I’m a saint or something,” He sighed, leaning against the wall, “Besides, I’m not exactly good at everything. The intelligent always use some sort of accomplice to fill in the gaps, and he’s definitely trustworthy. Even if he was suspicious, even if he did find out, he’d keep the secret.”

“How do you know that, though?”

“I’m not sure, but I just… I think that if there’s anyone outside I can trust to help me with this, it’s him. If this does end up backfiring terribly on me, I’ll deal with it then, but I think that with this guy… anything that could go sour wouldn’t affect you or any of the others. I’d just…” He trailed off, then shook his head, “It’s not important. Now, I need to go chop up a corpse.”

“Have fun,” Nageki shrugged, deciding to drop the issue. He could tell what Hitori had been about to say, of course. He usually could. Hitori was going to say that the only problem that could spring from his decision would be that he’d lose a friend he’d only just made. That was a problem all in itself, of course, not that he’d ever admit it. Nageki could tell, though. There was something different in Hitori than usual. He’d always been the type of person to attract a positive reputation, of course, but it had always seemed that he didn’t care about anybody besides his family. Until just now, when he was talking about this Kazuaki Nanaki.

Nageki would have to give his own opinion on this mystery accomplice at some point, but not yet. He’d see how things panned out between him and Hitori on their own, first. Who was he to judge something that wasn’t even serious yet, after all?


	4. Chapter 4

When Hitori first arrived at Kazuaki’s house for their tutoring session the following week, everything did seem at first to be completely normal. Just the same as usual, really. Same obnoxious mother, same labyrinth of things across the floor, trying very hard to avoid stepping on anything that would break or be squished disgustingly. It was impossible to avoid stepping on anything altogether. The real difference came when he got to Kazuaki’s room, and was surprised to see that while it still was by no means clean, the disgusting soda and most of the dishes had been removed from the room, and there were notably fewer articles of clothing on the floor to boot, “Hey, Nanaki. What happened here?”

“Huh?” He questioned, looking up from his game, in which he hadn’t currently been in the middle of anything, “Oh, you mean the room, right…? Well I just thought that, having it so messy when I knew I’d be having company was really… bad hosting, I guess? It was really exhausting but I think I got it pretty clean…”

“This is impressive,” Hitori nodded as he looked around, then sat down in the chair that Kazuaki had kept at the same desk since the first tutoring session, and he pulled out his phone, “Anyway, I actually managed to get the wifi at my house working, so I got up enough gems to do a 10+1 scout since last time.”

“Ah…! That’s great!” Kazuaki grinned at him, “I want to watch you scout!”

“I figured that you might,” He chuckled a bit, “There’s an event on right now, so I’m scouting in a pick-up box, I guess.”

“Right! Maybe you’ll get the Cafe Maid Umi! That would be nice, because Umi is your best girl, right?” He asked, leaning over Hitori’s phone as he pulled up the scouting window.

“Yeah, I like her,” He nodded, “Speaking of, which one’s your favorite?”

“Oh! Well, actually, I like Umi too. And Kotori,” He chuckled a bit, almost seeming nervous, “I actually, managed to idolize both parts of the September set last week. That’s the KotoUmi one.”

“Nice,” Hitori nodded, then turned and hit the button on his game for a 10+1 scout. At first it was all pink envelopes, for rares, but he knew that at least one of them had to flip, since the box had guaranteed SR+. What he wasn’t expecting, however, was for a rare envelope to turn red, “Well,” He stated in surprise before even seeing what card it was. Halloween set Hanayo, “Oh, she’s cute.”

“Ah!” Kazuaki smiled brightly, “You got a UR on your first 10+1 scout! That’s really lucky! Some FTP people don’t get any URs for a long time after they start!”

“FTP?” Hitori asked, looking for clarification on the unfamiliar acronym.

“Free to play. People who don’t buy their love gems,” He explained, “People who are smart and use their paychecks on things that matter. Also known as… not me…”

“Well, if there’s nothing else you need to spend money on, you might as well use it on something you like,” Hitori shrugged.

“I’m not as bad as some whales, anyway…” He sniffed, still trying to justify himself, “I actually spend some of my paycheck on food…”

“You do? Doesn’t your mother keep food in the house?” He asked, fairly confused.

“Yes, but… A lot of it is really bad, she doesn’t store anything right either… she puts frozen things in the pantry, so I usually end up ordering delivery food for myself when I can’t find anything that’s not gross, which is most of the time…” He trailed off, looking away, “She must have an iron stomach or something…”

“Well, that’s no good. Delivery food’s not very good for you, and now that I think about it, none of the other food I’ve seen lying around in your house is all that appetizing after all…” He thought for a moment, “Maybe I ought to teach you how to cook sometime.”

“Wha… really?” He just stared at him, “You’d do that?”

“Yeah, it’d be fun. Just, not yet. I want to make sure you can handle your math classes first before I try and teach you something completely unrelated, and besides, I’m being paid to teach you math, and you’ve still got two more paid sessions before it becomes exclusively mobile-game based,” He chuckled, “Speaking of, we’ve got to start working on math now.”

“All right…” Kazuaki sighed, but pulled out the notebook and immediately focused on it and Hitori. When he was actually trying to learn, he was a very good student after all. He paid attention, and he absorbed the knowledge just fine when he had everything explained to him. He really just needed it broken down, to relearn some of the aspects that went into more current topics.

After that tutoring session, it was actually several days until he needed to pull anything out of the freezer for the children. It didn’t take long for him to work out that it was basically an effort of every nine days, they needed to eat some human flesh, and could otherwise just live on normal food. With a such a big corpse as the one Hitori had fetched, he could actually avoid killing somebody else for at least two months. That certainly helped matters, that he wouldn’t need to commit murder quite so often. With an arrangement like that, paired with the fact that anyone he killed would be in… not quite self-defense, since he did invite incident and prepare to kill whoever attacked him, but something similar to that. In a breakdown of the particular moment, it was in defense of himself, so he supposed that qualified well enough.

By the time summer vacation was over, and Kazuaki went back to school, Hitori still hadn’t worked his way through that whole first corpse. To ask for help with the next one would be… a little more difficult, he expected, but then he decided that he just wouldn’t. If he happened to run into Kazuaki again, it would be convenient, but in the case that he didn’t he was certainly capable of dragging a corpse in a box, troubling as it was on his muscles and his ears.

The bigger concern was what the teachers would think of the fact that the Heartful House orphans stopped showing up, ever. Usually there was at least one of them one day a week, but now Hitori was certain there was no way any of them could go at all. He had to work harder to support zombie orphans than to support orphans generally, strangely enough, so he didn’t have time to go; and Nageki needed to watch the kids, and the kids themselves, well, of course they couldn’t go to school. Hitori didn’t want to even think about what the news stations would say about that sort of thing. Worst tragedy since school shootings, school cannibalism? He’d certainly prefer to avoid ever hearing that.

It only took two weeks of school for him to get a call about it, straight from the elementary school principal. Nageki, Momo, and Kanta were all in middle school still, and Hitori was at the high school, but he wasn’t surprised that it was the schooling for the youngest children that first became concerned at the lack of any Heartful House representation in the classrooms, “Hello, is this Heartful House?”

“Yeah. Hitori Uzune speaking,” He answered the phone, trying his best to sound professional, but relaxed, “What’s going on?”

“It’s come to our attention that some of your residents, while distance students, have not come to school at all since the end of summer vacation. This is certainly allowed on your plan, however, given that there has always been the occasional visit to class in the past, we thought it best to call and make sure that everything is all right.”

“Oh yes, everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it. The real issue would be if you stopped receiving their work, after all. We’ve simply decided to stop going to the school, our home environment is much better for learning anyhow.”

“Are you criticizing the school system?”

“Well, I am a tutor, and practically a parent too, so I think I have that right. In any case, we’ll have a problem if their work stops being turned in, but as of now everything is absolutely fine,” Hitori assured the principal, who then said goodbye and hung up the phone. That was certainly easier than he expected it would be, a fact for which he was completely relieved. If he’d needed to come up with a better explanation, he wasn’t sure he could, and what if the school became even more suspicious? He had to stay under the radar.

This was way too much for a high school student to deal with, honestly, but he had to. He didn’t have a choice, and anyway, he’d always done the best that he could for the people he cared about. He wasn’t about to stop now that it was a little bit more complicated. His tutoring sessions with Kazuaki had been moved from Thursday afternoons to Sundays at midday, seeing as the previous slot began an hour before school ended in the afternoons. Plus, he’d already exhausted the sessions his mother had actually paid for, so rescheduling wasn’t that big of a deal.

And things really seemed to fall into place in Hitori’s life, seemed to be okay. Every Sunday he would play SIF with Kazuaki, then teach him a few things about math, and he was actually keeping up in his classes. Though he didn’t tend to do his homework throughout the week, Hitori made him make it up during the tutoring sessions, so although he got penalties for turning it in late, he did turn it in. He still couldn’t tier for events, but every time a Kotori event rolled around Hitori would take his transfer code and tier it for him, being able to easily predict the tier cutoffs and play efficiently. The only event he’d failed to tier when he tried was an Umi event for himself; he wouldn’t let himself sleep through his alarms during events for Kazuaki, though.

He wasn’t quite sure why, but he really just wanted to see him safe and happy. It was a strange sort of feeling, because though he had spent most of his life feeling overprotective, that was towards people who he considered to be his family. This was different, and strange, because when he found himself in the worst of moods, Kazuaki was including along with his siblings in the exclusion to ‘everyone in this awful world should just die’. Everyone except his kids. Plus Kazuaki. It confused him, so he ignored it.

Every week, at some point, well, every nine days, he fed everyone in his house but himself and Nageki a meal of human flesh, which he defrosted the night before now that he was certain of the scheduling. It was simple, really. A fact of life. What’s for dinner? Fingers. Unlike the first few times, it really became completely routine. Ever since that first body, he’d had to drag the case by himself, but it had gone generally without incident. He hadn’t fallen asleep again, so his drugging had gone much smoother. Word never spread about him, because anyone who could say a thing was dead and spread throughout the stomachs of several… zombies. That statement was still odd to him, but he’d accepted it as fact.

If anyone happened to link his dragging of the case to mysterious disappearances in that neighborhood, they didn’t mention it to anybody, because he didn’t hear any rumors of disappearances at all. Maybe people just went missing from that particular part of town often enough that it had ceased to even matter. He somehow didn’t get any stronger, so it was always just as difficult to carry the case, but that was just something he had to deal with.

Everything in his life seemed to go on a simple, although strange schedule for several months. Eight, to be precise, given that he’d gotten through four corpses in his efforts to feed his siblings. Give or take a bit, of course. So really, eight wasn’t precise at all. In any case, he’d just about finished off the remnants of the last person he’d killed, so it was high time he went out again. Just like every time before, he left Nageki in charge. Just like every time before, he had chloroform and duct tape in his pockets, and the case stashed in that particular alleyway. Just like every time before, he went to stand there with his guard down, seemingly completely open to being targeted for a crime. Though unsure of the intentions of the person who’d found him sleeping, everyone else since had tried to mug him. Two unarmed, one with a knife, one with a gun. He somehow got through even that last one free of any injury.

He guessed that gun was to be fired in case of refusal, and the holder of it was in no way expecting him to fearlessly step forward, look him in the eyes, and drug him. That must have been a pretty awful last memory, and Hitori felt almost bad about it. Muggers weren’t the worst people out there, but he had to do something about them to avoid being hurt, and the orphans needed to eat. He could only hope that when he met them in Hell one day, he’d be able to explain and apologize. That hope wasn’t enough to stop him from doing, it though. Their lives meant nothing to him. He simply didn’t care. His siblings were all that mattered.

Perhaps, in the effort of seeming to let his guard down this time, he actually did let his guard down. Killing like this had become so routine that he was almost bored waiting here, and his senses were nowhere near as sharp now that he’d stopped being nervous about the deed. He never thought that becoming skilled at something could end up making him worse at it, but it seemed it had. Of course, that was what he thought. That was what he’d say if Nageki asked. If he messed up, it was his own fault, his own mistake, and no exterior factor.

When he had his shoulder grabbed suddenly, roughly pressing him against the wall he leaned against, he reached into his pocket for the cloth, just as before. Completely calm, calm for only a few seconds before his hand was stopped en route at the wrist, lifted up, twisted, and pinned just as much as his shoulder, “What, you got pepper spray in there or something, kid?? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to hang around alleys like this? What the Hell sort of reason you got, waiting on a drug deal or some shit…?” The voice was rough and malevolent, but Hitori couldn’t say he was afraid, because he also couldn’t say he expected things to go smoothly every single time. He knew the dangers of doing this, so he was not afraid, but he did have a sinking pit in his stomach which was not so much fear as a dreadful knowledge that something horrible could be about to happen to him.

The next few minutes, he could only describe as a blur. He was pinned against the wall, then he was on the ground. He was disconnecting himself from the situation as best he could, but for one brief moment when he was thrown down, he thought that it could be the end of him. That he was going to be murdered here, and wasn’t that fine enough retribution for what he’d done? Well, as poignant as that would be, to consider it cosmic revenge, he certainly didn’t. The people he killed were truly without value, and if he was to be killed by one of them, his death would be just as valueless itself.

But he was not going to be killed, or at least, not yet. He only realized snatches of what was going on, the feeling of the pavement suddenly on the bare skin of his arms, then on his back, the sight, or lack thereof, when his shirt was pushed up to cover his face and-

A metallic thud, a sound which echoed in the alleyway, the unmistakable sound of metal-based blunt force trauma to the skull. It certainly wasn’t to Hitori’s skull, however, and the blur seemed to clear as he sat up and pushed his shirt back down, taking a look around to see his assailant knocked out on the ground near him, and a further scanning of the scene (read, looking up) revealed who it was that had rescued him, though prior to seeing their identity, he hadn’t felt relieved, knowing that the ‘rescuer’ could just as easily want to cause him harm too…

But that clearly wasn’t the case, when he looked up and saw none other than Kazuaki Nanaki standing in the alley, staring tearfully and panicked at a metal pipe that he held in his hand, glancing back and forth between it and the person on the ground, then turned to look at Hitori instead, “...Uzune…?”

Hitori was relieved, at who it was, because he knew that meant he was home free in one way. However, that relief momentarily morphed into some sort of internal monster, sending his heart crashing to the ground in tandem with the routine and life he’d built up around himself. That’s… right… he wasn’t supposed to be seen, especially not doing something like this…

But Kazuaki wouldn’t tell, no, he would only hate him. That was it. This wasn’t dangerous. Only unfortunate. Right in plain view, he fixed his shirt and rebuckled his belt, at least the timing was lucky, and pulled the case out from where he’d hidden it. Retrieved his jacket from the ground, reached into the pocket, and attached the cloth to the unconscious man’s face, just to make sure he wouldn’t be waking up.

“Is he… is he dead…? Did I kill him…?” Kazuaki asked, starting to bawl as he dropped the pipe and stepped away from what he thought might have been a murder weapon, “What’s going on here…? I’m so confused, Uzune!”

“No, he’s not dead. Not yet. Just knocked out,” Hitori answered simply, closing the case. He picked up his scarf from the ground too, though he didn’t put it or the jacket back on, instead just slinging them over his shoulder and starting to drag the case away silently.

“Uzune…” Kazuaki mumbled, putting a hand on his shoulder then… picking up the case for him, “I just want answers… please…”

“One question at a time. I’ll answer while we walk. People don’t care about the affairs of strangers, after all. Everyone will just think they overheard wrong,” He continued moving, and Kazuaki followed him, frowning.

“Uh… first question… why are you taking this guy in this case? Why not just leave him passed out? And why do you have this case? Was there a body in it last time too…?”

“What part of one question at a time don’t you understand? Whatever,” He sighed, crossing his arms, “Yes, there was a body in it last time. I put that case in the alley for the express purpose of putting somebody into it. I wasn’t joking after all, when I told you that I live with monsters. They need to eat. Need to eat human flesh. Go ahead and call me crazy, I honestly don’t care about anything right now.”

“Okay…” Kazuaki mumbled, “I… that is pretty weird, but I trust you, Uzune… If you say that’s real, then I guess that it must be… So another question I had is, why were you here in particular? That was really dangerous, you got attacked by that guy and everything…”

“I could ask you the same thing, but I’ll answer first. I was here in particular because I wouldn’t kill just anyone. I wanted to get attacked, so I could be sure I wasn’t dealing with anyone who was a really good person. If I have to murder people to take care of my family, I can at least pick people who might not deserve to live. I just… made a mistake. I wasn’t fast enough, so I wasn’t able to drug him before he got the upper hand.”

“So you’ve… done this several times…” Kazuaki nodded slowly, then suddenly looked very worried, “Have you failed in the past??”

“No,” He shook his head, “Not at this, anyway.”

“That’s good…” He nodded, “If I hadn’t shown up, then you would have been…”

“Doesn’t matter,” He shrugged simply, “That’s not to say I’m not grateful, but really, it doesn’t matter. As long as he’d left me alive I would have been fine. My well-being is unimportant. I was more worried that I wouldn’t get more food for my family.”

“I, I don’t think that’s true! Your well-being is definitely important… I actually think it’s even more important now that I know… what’s going on,” Kazuaki stammered out, tears still streaming down his face, “That you’d go so far to care for the people you love, to do something like this… All for their sake… I think that’s truly amazing.”

“You…” Hitori just looked at him in confusion, “What?”

“It’s not like you’re hurting good people, after all… and doing something like this must be really hard, but you still just care about keeping them happy…” He sighed as he tried to get across his point, “It’s something you need to do, to help them, so the fact that you’ll do something so hard instead of giving up on them shows that you really do care about them…”

“Huh…” He thought on that a moment, “You really do have a strange outlook on things, Nanaki.”

“I don’t think so. I think that… you seem like you have it all together, at first, but you don’t… Just because you’re smart, and friendly, I guess that doesn’t mean you’re any better off than anyone else…” He mumbled, putting the case down and grabbing Hitori’s arm, turning it over to look at it more closely. Normally he would object to this, but at the moment he was still in too much of a daze. He didn’t want to face reality, so he would behave as if this wasn’t it, “So that’s why you’re always wearing a jacket…” His frown deepened as he rubbed his thumb over one of the scars, “Hitori, you were telling me once, that this world is truly awful. You’ve… been hurt before, haven’t you…?”

“I told you. It doesn’t matter,” He pulled his arm back to cross them again, then put emphasis on the name when he spoke again, “Nanaki. I don’t care about myself. They are all that matters to me. I’d give up my life for them. I am hardly even anyone at all…” He turned, locking eyes with Kazuaki, then leaned down and grabbed the case, dragging it, “I don’t think you’ll be seeing me again. You’re all caught up with your curriculum now, after all. Just pay attention in class and you’ll do just fine. Goodbye.”

This time, Kazuaki didn’t follow after him.  
He felt like he should,  
But he didn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

Upon arriving back at his own house, Kazuaki realized that he’d never even actually told Hitori why he’d been in the area, which seemed to be a bit rude, though he hadn’t quite had the opportunity to. No… he certainly did have the opportunity to, now that he thought about it. He could have explained himself rather than prying into Hitori’s personal life. That would have been a much better course of action, in retrospect.

He couldn’t dwell on that, though. Just as strangely as he’d come into his life, Hitori was gone. He knew where Hitori’s house was, of course, but… it did make him afraid, the thought of going there. Hitori had never said what sort of monsters were there, but given that he had also referred to them as his siblings, it left a strange feeling in Kazuaki’s gut. He’d enjoyed reading, once, when he felt like he had the time for it, and he still liked the assigned reading from his classes. He’d read his fair share of literature pertaining to the undead, and as odd as that might be, he felt as if it was the most likely explanation.

Not that he would ever find out the truth, of course. He felt as if that night, it was a dip into the stranger side of the world, a side of the world that was not meant for him to ever see or touch. The part of the world where the occult lies and the part of the world filled up with the same sort of people as the man he’d hit with the pipe. He’d just been trying to find his way home, having gotten lost after school (and a meeting of an extracurricular he had no intention of continuing with, but may as well try) when he took a wrong turn, and stumbled into what was indisputably the worst part of town. Something that one might even describe as a red light district. He’d wandered around for several hours, crying as it got dark, but at least he got left alone.

The main streets were at least a little safe, after all. Anything went, nobody asked questions, but even the worst people among worst people were not so keen on being seen committing a crime, so as long as he stuck to the actual roads rather than alleyways, he was safe. He witnessed two separate muggings when he peered down alleys, finding it absurd that such a dangerous place even existed anywhere in the world, but didn’t intervene in those cases. He had to intervene when he saw… that, though. It was a shock to see that it was Hitori being victimized, or at least a strange coincidence.

He… couldn’t really say he was surprised that somebody would hurt Hitori, though. Not to say that he wanted to, of course not, but Hitori was, as he said himself, small. And as Kazuaki had almost called him the first time he unwittingly carried an unconscious body for him, cute. It wasn’t unexpected at all, that he’d end up getting hurt by somebody. That he had been hurt by somebody before; and no current adventure of rescue could change something like that.

No, that wasn’t really the issue at hand. The real problem, it was what Hitori had said. Kazuaki would be a liar to say he hadn’t thought about dying on a somewhat regular basis, but even to him the way that Hitori so easily changed from such a… person, to whatever he had become just now. Kazuaki didn’t know much about people in general, but he was certain that giving one’s entire self up to the happiness of somebody else couldn’t be healthy.

He’d seen the results of that firsthand, actually, so it wasn’t even any level of assumption, now was it? There was something deeply unsettling, to hear somebody who he looked up to and considered a friend, say that his own health and happiness didn’t matter in the slightest. Somebody who had always seemed so good at this whole living thing, and while Kazuaki did figure that he might have some issues that he wasn’t sharing, he couldn’t have ever expected such a blatant proclamation of whatever that was. He didn’t even know how to describe it, he just knew that he didn’t like it.

Then again, this night hardly even felt real to begin with, so he had to entertain the thought that he could be dreaming. That’s right, this could all just be some nasty dream, playing on some fear of losing the one friend he’d made since getting to high school… He would just, go to sleep, and when he woke up the next morning everything would be fine. That’s right, it would. He almost didn’t even play any SIF before going to bed, but he couldn’t do that.

He made a change to his profile while he was there, just so that when he woke up, he could tell if this really happened or not. If his display name was back to what it usually was, then he was right about this being a bizarre nightmare. If not, well… he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. Unfortunately, morning brought about that exact bridge, as he discovered when he opened the game only to see… well, something was certainly going on in his messages tab, which was unusual. Normally he only got messages occasionally, or a few more when… Hitori tiered an event for him, but that had certainly not happened recently.

He opened up one of them, and after reading it, decided to respond. Shockingly enough, he got one back from the same friend quickly, and it turned into a conversation held through SIF. Quite the odd incident, of course. At least he had one thing going for him, and that was that people knew him as a whale in this game… though maybe that just made him more pathetic?

[Hey, Kazuaki. You changed your display name from (*´∪`) to (´д｀、) is something wrong?]  
{Yeah… something is.}  
[You can tell me about it if you want to. I know you don’t really know me but I will listen.]  
{I think I lost my best friend yesterday.}  
[Falling out? Or…]  
{I don’t know. He said I wouldn’t see him again. I’m worried. Maybe he is dead.}  
[Did he seem angry?]  
{Not at all he seemed really… not good. Worse than sad I think.}  
[That really is not good. Does he also play SIF? Maybe I could try to talk to him for you.]  
{Yeah he’s the one who did all the tiering for me actually… I buy lots of love gems but I can’t manage my time very well at all… I don’t think he would be on now though.}  
[I could at least try? What’s his ID?]  
{I couldn’t say… he’s not on my friends list anymore.}  
[That’s worrying. Do you live near him? Maybe you should go to his house.]  
{I couldn’t do that… he says it’s dangerous there, and I’m really a coward…}

He stopped responding after that, just deleting the rest of the messages, though he changed his profile message to say that he thanked them for their concern, but it was fine, really. He was just having a bad day. Nothing too terrible.

But as soon as he closed the game, he fell to his bed crying, burying his face in his pillow and sobbing. It was real, it was completely real, and as confusing and dreamy as the previous night had been, he knew it was. It had to be, now, and he hated it completely. After crying for a good twenty minutes, he sat up, still hugging the pillow to his chest. He looked around the room, eyes falling on various objects, and he contemplated briefly how each of those items could potentially kill him… only to find himself freaked out by the idea, turning over to hide under his blankets to hide from the oh-so-menacing everyday objects.

He sighed as he lay there, and thought about his life. It was moments like these, when he contemplated suicide only to recoil in fear, that he realized just how much he valued his own life. What about his life was there even to be valued, though? He had a weird job and he’d never make anything better of himself, he spent all his money on mobile games and takeout food. He took so long to understand math that Hitori hadn’t even started teaching him to cook. Hitori. What sort of person was he to value a life in which he’d managed to scare off his only friend?

And what sort of person was Hitori, to not value his own life when he had so much more to value in it? He was smart enough to be a tutor, and even though he was supporting a household he still gave some of his tutoring more or less for free. He didn’t get discouraged easily, and yet he’d definitely said those words. When Kazuaki asked if he’d been hurt, he said that it didn’t matter. In such a strange way, such a particular way that it cut him right to the bone. It wasn’t just that Hitori didn’t want him to know if anything had happened. He honestly believed that it made no difference to anything, what happened to him.

If only they could trade, Kazuaki thought. If only he could stop caring so much about his own worthless life and die, if only he could make Hitori care about his.

It was only several weeks later that he was able to work up the nerve to try and go see Hitori, though. It was the first day of a two week period that his mother was going to be out of town, and though he’d never admit it, that was certainly a deciding factor. When he looked at his mom, he saw his future. He saw what was destined for him, a life of doing nothing worth anybody’s time at all, going through the days with the outlook of a slug that had suddenly become unslimy and grown arms, needing to drag itself painfully along the ground.

He saw himself in her, and it was suffocating. The feeling that one day, he would be just like her. He was already on his way there, with no skills in cooking whatsoever, and a particular exhaustion that came from attempting to only keep his room or himself clean on a day-to-day basis, to do anything worth anybody’s time at all; but when she was gone, the day she was gone, he began to wonder if that might be different. He stopped looking into what his future was going to be, and started wondering what it was that he wanted his future to be.

He wanted to become just a little, the smallest, tiniest bit competent. That was the first thing he wanted out of life, he wanted to feel a little bit useful. But he also wanted to be taken care of. He wanted, for once in his life, to be told it would be fine, and okay. Hitori had come close to doing that for him. Hitori… he wanted to see Hitori again. He wanted to see Hitori, and for more than just a few seconds, or a fleeting glance at him when they happened to see each other around town. If Hitori was even still alive… he wanted to teach Hitori to value his own life. His own well-being, his own happiness. He wanted… to find a way, to make Hitori happy.

To do that, however, he would need to go to Hitori’s house, and by the time he’d worked up the nerve to do so, another obstacle arose. Said obstacle being the time. When he’d finally steeled himself to go up to Heartful House and… at least knock on the door once, he needed to wait another half an hour to get up the nerve to make the walk up there in the dark.

He did it, though. He made his way up to Heartful House and he knocked on the door and, surprisingly enough, Nageki answered, though he only cracked it open slightly. He took a look up and down Kazuaki, who was crying as usual, then said in a monotone, “Let me guess. You’re Kazuaki Nanaki?”

“H-How did you know? Are you a mind reader? Is that your monster power…?”

“Monster power…? What did Hitori even tell you…?” He questioned, “No, I knew because you’re crying. He told me a few things about you and one of those was that tears in seemingly unfitting situations is a defining trait of yours.”

“He told me that he lived with monsters…” Kazuaki mumbled, looking away from the door, “A-and this is totally a fitting situation for me to be crying… It’s dark, and I’m scared, and I’m worried about Uzune…”

“You and me both,” Nageki sighed, “All the ‘monsters’ are asleep already, let me just go lock their doors then you can come inside,” He returned a minute later, opening the door further and letting Kazuaki in, “So, why are you worried about him?”

“Well he… I haven’t heard from him in a f-few weeks now… the last thing he said to me was that I wouldn’t be seeing him again…” He mumbled, fidgeting with the shawl he was wearing, “I know I probably should have acted on this concern a lot sooner, but I… I’m not much one for turning thoughts into action, honestly…”

“Well, he’s still alive, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s just not doing so well. Every time I try to talk to him about it, he just walks away from me…” Nageki sighed, sitting down in his usual spot on the couching and picking up a book, just to have it, though he didn’t open it, “He’s really pushing himself too hard, I think. I wish there was something I could do to help him.”

“Where is he right now anyway…?” Kazuaki asked as he sat down as well, taking up as little space as possible.

“Out. I don’t know where, but he’s out. He should be back soon, though. He’s always back before midnight, give or take ten minutes,” Nageki explained, then sighed, “I’m actually glad you came here. Maybe between the both of us he’ll be forced to listen to what we have to say, which is probably about the same thing. He needs to stop overworking himself just because he thinks it will make things better in general. All he’s doing is harming himself.”

“Yeah that’s about what I wanted to say to him too…” He agreed with a small nod, “Except also… I asked him about some stuff, the night when he left, and he said that it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t matter that bad things had happened to him before, like it didn’t matter that he was hurting himself… I think it does matter, though. It really matters. He’s such a great person and he’s so nice, and he works so hard and tries his best, he needs to think about himself sometimes…”

“Well…” Nageki hesitated, “Maybe it’s best if you don’t bring up the past, Nanaki. Not that I think you’re wrong, but talking about that just makes him worse. It reminds him that we here at Heartful House are the only people he can trust, and he just wants to protect us even more then.”

“What even… happened…?” He asked, “If you know… I mean you are in middle school… sorry.”

“No, I know. As much as any of us do, that is. He’s never actually said what happened, but back when there were still adults here, they did try to get us adopted. Apparently something went really south with a foster family Hitori went to, and that’s why he hasn’t tried to arrange anything since he’s ended up basically in charge here. Well, now it would be impossible anyway, but even before then… it was because of something that happened to him, and nobody knows, and I highly doubt he’s ever going to tell. Just don’t bring it up.”

“Okay…” Kazuaki nodded slowly, staring at the floor, “But I just… I feel like if he never talks about it, he’s never going to feel better… That’s what I’ve always heard, at least, when bad things happen to people…”

“Normally that’s a perfectly correct assessment. Not when it comes to Hitori, though. He… if he admits that anything happened, he’ll also have to admit that he cares that it happened. If that makes sense, I’m not great at explaining things.”

“I guess I understand…” He shrugged, trailing off, then Nageki opened his book and started reading it, now ignoring him. He didn’t blame him, since he didn’t really have much to say aside from fretting over Hitori. Now he would just fret in silence; though that didn’t last incredibly long, since the door swung open a few minutes later with a greatly unsettling clatter, as if it had been haphazardly pushed aside rather than actually opened. Turning to look revealed that was exactly the case.

Hitori was standing at the doorway, but only just barely, looking for all the world like a ragdoll that had been badly placed onto a stand and would soon fall off. Kazuaki was on his feet in seconds, but Nageki was faster, going so far as to drop his book as he dashed to Hitori’s side. For him to discard a book in such a way was evidence enough that something was very much wrong here, that even for all the worry, this wasn’t Hitori’s casual state of being. Kazuaki did get over there in only a few moments once Nageki had, but Hitori had already fallen to the floor, and Nageki had dropped to his knees as well. In the panic, neither of them said anything, but Hitori did, with a glare pointed in Kazuaki’s direction.

“What are you doing here…?” His voice was not as full of disdain as Kazuaki had expected. It was almost… pathetic. He never thought he’d be able to apply that adjective to Hitori, but there it was. Pathetic.

“I was worried about you…” He answered, and Hitori just scoffed.

“Thought so. Get out.”

“Hitori, he’s not leaving,” Nageki said matter-of-factly, so even if Kazuaki might have followed that order, he clearly now didn’t have a choice in the matter, “I’m worried about you too. Especially right now. You were already overworking yourself, and now you come home like this…?”

“Fine. If he won’t leave, at least let me talk to him alone. And stop worrying, Nageki. It’s not important,” He grimaced, pressing one hand into his face.

“No, Hitori, I’m done with not worrying about you. I’m completely worried. You spend so much time worrying about other people, you can’t just turn around and tell us not to worry about you too,” Nageki frowned, then stood up, “I’ll let you talk alone, though,” he sighed, but did leave the room, leaving Kazuaki alone with Hitori. Before either of them said anything, Kazuaki carefully picked him up, then lay him down on the couch. That was bound to be better than the floor.

“Kazuaki…” Hitori whispered, and Kazuaki was only confused. Why would he call him by his first name now, when he was clearly annoyed with him, “Why would you worry about me. I told you that it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

“It’s exactly because you said that, that I’m worried about you… Hitori,” Kazuaki frowned, crossing his arms and sniffling, “It was really concerning because… if you really don’t care what happens to you, and all that stuff you said about the world being awful, and your arms… it made me really scared that you were going to…”

“Kill myself? No, I wouldn’t do that. There’s too much I still have to do here. Too many people need me to stick around here. It’s almost unfortunate,” He sighed, closing his eyes, “I’m just so tired…”

“Hitori, don’t you dare go to sleep right now,” Kazuaki’s voice was shaky, but had more authority to it than he ever thought himself capable of, and he put a hand on Hitori’s shoulder, only to realize just how warm he was to the touch, “I think you have a fever… and you don’t seem to be doing well, if you sleep right now… then you might just leave them behind after all…”

“Well we can’t have that,” He sighed, exasperated as he opened his eyes again, “Kazuaki, I… I’m sorry I stopped talking to you. I just. Well, I don’t know how to handle it, when people worry about me, because I don’t worry about myself. I just do what I can for the people I care about, no matter the cost to myself. I realize that’s strange, though. To think like that, I’m hardly even a person myself, am I? So you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

“That’s… that was why you left…?” Kazuaki asked, wiping his eyes, “You thought I didn’t like you anymore…?”

“Well, yeah. You found out that I kill people, then I said something like that… Must have made me seem like some sort of heartless machine…” He muttered, then turned over to hide his face in the couch cushion, “I’m just a mess all around.”

It was those words that reminded Kazuaki of a fact he’d almost overlooked. Hitori was leagues more competent, sure, but he was still a teenager too. He was a teenager, trying to deal with all of these things in his life, they were really just the same. Teenagers, trying and generally failing to handle what life threw at them; and Hitori was having so, so much thrown at him that it only made sense that he’d have a breakdown eventually. It only made sense that he would ignore certain problems to focus on dealing with the others. Kazuaki suddenly… understood, and he just leaned down and wrapped his arms around Hitori, “It’s okay to be a mess sometimes… just look at me, I’m a mess all the time, and you don’t hate me for it…”

“That’s right… I don’t…” He mumbled, curling up more, “I just don’t know what to do with myself. Everything is overwhelming. It’s too much, I can’t handle it, but I need to. I need to do these things, I can’t think about how it affects me. I have to block it out. They’re what matters, not me, not me at all.”

“Hitori, this is obviously causing you pain… You can’t just ignore that…”

“I have to ignore it. I have to. All of this, it’s too much, but I need to do it. I can’t just quit, this is a responsibility I have to deal with. I can’t deal. So I just have to… pretend that I don’t care,” He was finally telling the truth, and he sat up, leaning back against the couch, “And it’s not completely a lie, anyway. If it would… if it could possibly guarantee a good life for them, I’d unravel myself completely. I’d go through any pain at all, for their sakes, but actually carrying on as normal through that pain…” He shook his head, “I just have to do it. I have to keep going. Keep trying. They mean everything to me, so I’ll give up anything for them.”

“Well, they wouldn’t want you to do that, I think…” Kazuaki strained softly, putting a hand on Hitori’s face, just trying to convey his emotions, though he couldn’t explain them himself, “I don’t think they’ll be happy if you’re not okay… I, I can try to help you, okay? Is that okay? I do have a job, Hitori, and no expenses…”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” He shook his head, pressing his palms against his eyes until he saw spots, trying to keep himself awake.

“Well, I could ask you to let me do it,” He changed his wording, “I want to be useful, for once in my life, and if I could not only be useful, but be useful to you… I think that would be really great… and then you wouldn’t have to work as hard, and you could feel better…” He hesitated a second, wiping his eyes with his free hand before going out on a limb, “What happened, anyway? How did you get… like this…?”

“That’s not important…” He mumbled, getting a disapproving look from Kazuaki, but that wasn’t about to make him tell the truth on this matter. He’d already revealed more embarrassingly personal things than he ever intended to, “Just another odd job… I had to pay for interior locks, and for the freezer, and between that and the kids being home all the time, the electrical bills have gone way up… It’s just another thing I had to do. It’s no big deal.”

“Hitori, please don’t lie to me… just tell me. I’m not going to judge you, I just don’t want you to be upset, or hurt anymore…” He shook his head, starting to cry again, “You’re trying so hard but you deserve a break, you need a break…”

“I’m not going to tell you exactly what it was. It was just an odd job. It’s not important. I’m just… feeling sick, because it was just a little bit physcially taxing, and I’m weak as all get out. Let me sleep. It’s not dangerous. I just want to go to sleep right now, Kazuaki…” He trailed off, pulling his hands away from his face and looking up at the ceiling, “Let me sleep…”

“Okay,” He nodded slowly, finally taking his own hand off of Hitori’s face too, “I’ll… go home, but will I see you on Sunday…?”

“Yeah,” Hitori nodded as he lay back down on the couch, “Sunday. I’ll be there…” He dozed off as he said that, but he still didn’t look peaceful. Even asleep right now, he looked stressed, overwhelmed, and weak. So incredibly weak. Every bit of strength that Kazuaki had seen in him before, an intimidating level of being a stupendous role model, seemed to have melted away now. He was truly seeing Hitori now, not Uzune. Not the earnest and smart math tutor, but a desperate boy with responsibilities beyond what he could handle.

He sighed, standing up and sparing one more look at Hitori before walking over to the door, only to be stopped by Nageki as he grabbed the doorknob, “Hey. Before you go, don’t you think it would be polite to tell me how my brother’s doing?”

“Right… I’m sorry…” He sniffed, taken aback by his own perceived rudeness, finding himself crying again. Then again, had he ever really stopped? In any case, at least he didn’t have to deliver bad news, “He actually said he was overwhelmed, which seems like an improvement to me… That he’d admit that, I mean. He said that it was too much for him to deal with, but that since he had to deal with it, he’d just try and pretend it didn’t bother him…”

“I see…” Nageki nodded slowly, then sighed, “That sounds like him… but is he going to stop pushing himself so hard? He really doesn’t need to do everything that he’s doing… I’m old enough, I could try and do something to help out too, and Momo and Kanta could do something online, I’m sure…”

“You don’t have to,” Kazuaki shook his head, “I have a job and I’m going to help, so Hitori can go back to just tutoring and not taking any other weird side jobs…”

“That’s really nice of you,” Nageki nodded, “Really. I’m glad that Hitori has a friend outside of Heartful House, and it’s particularly good that you actually want to try helping him. So… thank you, Nanaki. I hope I’ll see you again, sometime. I think that you’re good for Hitori, honestly.”

“That sounds like you’re telling me to date him…” He chuckled a bit, jokingly.

“Maybe I am. I’m certainly not telling you not to date him,” Nageki shrugged, “In any case, you should be getting home. It’s still pretty dangerous for you here, if any of the others happened to wake up. Plus, I’m… not quite sure how contagious it is.”

“How contagious what is…?” He questioned, the atmosphere suddenly dropping to something much more unsettling.

“Something that Hitori and I are both immune to. It’s what made the others the way that they are now. It’s obviously not incredibly airborne, but spending too much time in this house might cause some problems…” He frowned, leaning against the wall, “In which case, I do apologize for the possibility that you’ve been infected just by coming here… just be careful, okay? You happen to start wanting to eat people, come here right away.”

“I… Okay…” He nodded slowly, then left with that strange fear now placed into his heart. That’s not to say that if he had been told ahead of time about the potential of what he could only describe as zombification he wouldn’t have gone in there anyway, though. At this point, he actually considered making sure Hitori was all right to have a higher priority over his continued ability to be a human. 

But then, that did raise the worse question to be thought on, which was a worry that if he did happen to be infected, he’d probably have to stop working, and thus stop helping Hitori… well, that was just another bridge to burn when he got there, now wasn’t it? At the moment, he just wanted to get home. Get home, and go to sleep, and wait for Sunday. Just two days, two days until he’d hopefully see Hitori in a more normal setting again. No rescues, no lugging of unconscious bodies in cases, no listening to him go on about how his health and happiness were unimportant.


	6. Chapter 6

Nageki took a seat on the couch next to his sleeping brother and opened the book he was reading. He wasn’t tired, not right now. He wouldn’t sleep until he woke up, wouldn’t sleep until he talked to Hitori. It was two hours until he stirred, but that was better than the whole night that it could have been. As much as Hitori slept, he often didn’t sleep for incredibly long periods of time when he fell asleep unwittingly. Or, in this case, not exactly unwittingly, but still not entirely intended. He had just given in to his general sleepiness, rather than actually going to sleep.

“Nageki…? What are you doing still awake?” He asked quietly when he woke up, starting to sit up but then just lying right back down again. He didn’t feel up to moving right now.

“I stayed up because I wanted to talk to you, Hitori,” He answered simply, “You’re obviously having a bad time. I don’t want you to do anything dumb.”

“I’m not going to, Nageki. It’s all right. I’ll be fine, I’ll be right back to normal tomorrow morning. I’m just having a bad night,” He sighed, holding his hands against his chest.

“Well, last time you had a bad night, it almost ended in disaster, so forgive me if that’s not reassuring,” He frowned, putting his book down, “You have a really skewed worldview, Hitori. We’re not worth your life, and you’re too young to be responsible for all of us, but you throw yourself so completely into the role that it’s honestly… not healthy. I’m still just a kid, sure, and I don’t know a lot, but I don’t think it’s okay for you to care more about me and the others than you do about yourself…” He hesitated a moment, “And, I feel like… it’s not for humanity’s sake that you’re keeping them inside, is it? Last time you had a really bad night, you said that… everyone outside of Heartful House could die, for all you cared.”

“I really am a terrible role model to you kids, aren’t I?” Hitori sighed.

“That’s because you’re still a kid too. You shouldn’t need to be a role model.”

“But I do. In any case, though, I can’t pretend you’re not correct. I really don’t care what happens to humanity, at all. I just don’t want them getting hurt. An awful world like this, would kill them for acting on their illness, I think…” He muttered, fidgeting with the ends of his scarf, “I wouldn’t care either way, if they killed everyone out there, except for… Kazuaki, I think, he’s the only person outside of Heartful House whose life I care about at all. Don’t… don’t think that’s the right way to think, though. It isn’t.”

“He might need to come here soon too. If he… he could have been infected, by being here,” Nageki mumbled this bit before raising back up to his usual volume, “And don’t worry, I’m not Hoppe. I’m not that impressionable. I’ll form my own opinions on the value in humanity, thanks.”

“Good,” He responded first, but then processed what Nageki had mumbled first, then sighed, “I wish I could say that bothered me more than it does, but honestly… if he got infected, he would be a little bit safer. I wouldn’t have to worry about him coming here and getting killed.”

“You really do have some mixed up priorities, Hitori.”

“Nageki…” He sighed again, “Do you hate me?”

“Of course I don’t hate you,” He shook his head, “I just don’t understand you. I guess I will when I’m older, though, so I can just go along with everything until then. Besides, it’s not like I have a choice, I’m not about to say we should sacrifice my friends for the sake of humanity on the whole… you’re closest to an adult here, so I’ll let you make the decisions. I just don’t want you to burn yourself out doing so. That’s as far as my involvement goes, really… I’m not about to judge your morals in a situation like this. I just want to make sure you don’t regret your choices… I want to make sure you have your priorities straight. If you think you do, I won’t argue with you.”

“Well,” He chuckled, but it wasn’t out of any sense of humor, “I’m not so sure I understand myself either. There’s so many things I’m confused over right now, but I can say with certainty that… I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy. The same goes for the others. I don’t care about the lives of strangers, if it gets in the way of any of your happiness. That’s the only thing I’m really sure about, but I’m incredibly so.”

“I thought as much…” Nageki nodded, then stood up, “I’m going to go to bed now. Goodnight, Hitori. Please, try to feel better.”

“Goodnight Nageki. I will.”

-  
Hitori arrived at Kazuaki’s house an hour early. An hour early being an hour early than the already hour-early time that he was usually there. It had been a few weeks since he’d last been there, and it was surreal to him that such a weekly occurrence had temporarily ceased as it had, though he didn’t deny that it was entirely his own fault. One other thing to consider was the fact that thanks to the ‘break’ he’d taken, the fact that the house smelled horrible actually affected him once again, being that in the past he’d gotten to a point of tuning it out.

However, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first time, and now that he looked around, he noticed that the house was… not as huge a mess as it was before. It was still nowhere in the realm of being clean, of course, but there were notably fewer rotting piles of leftovers lying about, so that was… a plus?

Kazuaki was actually not in his room, either, standing right in the kitchen when Hitori walked in (as he’d taken to doing so rather than knocking a few weeks into their friendship) and struggling on the phone, seemingly trying to order a pizza, but failing wildly at doing so. Hitori frowned, walked over, and took the phone from him, “Sorry, nevermind,” and he hung it up.

“H-Hitori, what was that about? And why are you here so early? I haven’t even had lunch yet…” Kazuaki protested, taking his phone back, “And now I won’t get to…”

“Yes, you will. I told you I was going to teach you how to cook, didn’t I? What better way to start teaching you than to help you make lunch for yourself?” He sighed, “Do you always have that much difficulty ordering food?”

“Yes…” He nodded sheepishly, looking away.

“That’s ridiculous. All the more reason you should learn to cook for yourself instead of calling in for delivery all the time. Come on, let’s go to the grocery store. I can’t imagine you have any ingredients in the house whatsoever, after all.”

“Uh…” Kazuaki turned and opened the fridge, “There’s two apples in here, and some tuna…” Then he turned to a cabinet, “And some bread.”

“You don’t refrigerate your bread?” Hitori asked, sounding a bit confused.

“No… does it need to be refrigerated?? Have I been eating spoiled bread my whole life??” He immediately went into a panic, and Hitori just put a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head.

“It’s not important, bread just doesn’t spoil as quickly if you keep it in the fridge, I guess. To each their own,” He said this but was actually made very uncomfortable by the thought of storing bread any differently, but the unrefrigerated bread didn’t look moldy, so he supposed it was okay, “But yeah. Those aren’t exactly useful ingredients. So we’re going shopping.”

“Hitoriiii I don’t wanna go shopping…” He whined, “Shopping is hard. Can’t you just teach me how to make an apple and tuna sandwich…?”

“Don’t you think that sounds absolutely disgusting? And what would you even learn from it?” He questioned, still perplexed.

“I would learn… how to cut an apple…? And… open a can…?” Kazuaki offered hesitantly with a nervous smile, and Hitori just sighed and opened the fridge back up, pulling out the items in question.

“Fine, but when it’s disgusting, don’t come crying to me,” He groaned.

“Well I’m going to cry anyway but I won’t cry at you in particular over the sandwich being gross. If the sandwich ends up being gross,” He shrugged as he went looking for a knife to cut up the apple with, and eventually came up with one that would work and was actually clean, which was a bit of a shock to Hitori, but also a relief. Of course, there was no way there’d be a cutting board anywhere, and one glance through the cupboards revealed that none of the plates were particular suitable for cutting things on, having too much of a lip or otherwise being cheap plastic, so Hitori tracked down some paper towels and cleaned off a section of the counter.

“Here. I’ll cut up one of the apples as an example, then you can try and do the other one, okay?” Hitori explained, and Kazuaki nodded, so he took the knife and put the apple on the counter, “The best bet for you would be to set the apple down like a normal apple, standing up. Hold it carefully at the top, then just cut like this,” He demonstrated, “To the right of the core. Then you can lay it down on the now flat side and cut the new left and right, then turn it over and cut off the last bit,” He explained as he went, “Then, throw out the core, and just slice up the pieces of apple you have left, like this,” more demonstration, “It’s simple and easy, and you won’t hurt yourself unless you don’t follow my instructions.”

“Okay…” Kazuaki nodded, taking the knife and picking up the other apple, immediately starting to cut it completely wrong, without even putting it down on the counter. Hitori just grabbed both of his wrists.

“No, you always want to cut things on a cutting board. Or in this case, the bare counter, seeing as you don’t own a cutting board. Cutting up in the air like that, you /will/ end up getting hurt, and because you didn’t listen to me, it would be your own fault,” He sighed, taking the apple and putting it down on the counter, “Now try cutting it. Exactly as I showed you.”

Kazuaki looked like he was about to do it right, but then he completely didn’t, turning the apple onto its side slightly and trying to cut it at an angle. Of course, the knife slipped, and he cut his hand, but he also… didn’t seem to react to cutting his hand, and just finished his shoddy knifework on the fruit by the time Hitori noticed he was bleeding, “Kazuaki, are you okay?” He asked, stepping closer.

“Huh? Yeah, why wouldn’t I be okay?” He questioned, then actually looked down at his hand to see that he was, oddly enough, bleeding. As soon as he noticed he started tearing up, of course, “Ahh! I cut my hand…!”

“How did you not…” Hitori started to wonder aloud, but then trailed off as he noticed that something was… off. Something was not quite right about the blood coming from Kazuaki’s hand, it wasn’t red enough, rather it seemed… closer to black. Hitori wasn’t quite sure what happened next or why he did it, running on some sort of strange instinct; in a matter of seconds, he’d snatched the knife from Kazuaki, cut his own hand, and pressed the wounds together, though as soon as he did it he looked up at Kazuaki’s face in a strangely panicked confusion, “I’m… I don’t know why I did that.”

“Hitori… what’s going on…?” Kazuaki sniffed, pulling his hand back and staring at it, “I don’t… feel any pain at all, but my hand is definitely bleeding…”

“Right, that’s right, yeah…” Hitori nodded, visibly concerned, and that concern only manifested as even more stress when he heard the doorbell ring, “Who in Hell-” He shook his head, cutting himself off, and pushed Kazuaki further into the kitchen before going to open the door slightly.

“Pizza delivery?” The delivery guy was clearly taken aback to see somebody in such an obvious state of distress opening the door by such a small crack.

“How are you here. I hung up the phone before he finished ordering,” Though he was asking questions, his tone made them sound much more like harsh statements.

“Well, I recognized the order. He’s ordered from here before, so…” He stood up on his toes, trying to see past Hitori into the house, which wasn’t hard given that Hitori was… pretty small, however, there was nothing out of the ordinary in that particular field of vision. Kazuaki was still in the kitchen, out of view.

“Too bad, we don’t want it,” Hitori said simply, and went to close the door, but the delivery guy stuck his foot into it.

“Something sketchy’s going on here. Where is Kazuaki Nanaki?” The delivery guy asked, furrowing his brow and continuing to try and look inside.

“I’m right here,” Kazuaki answered from right behind Hitori, causing him to jump in shock and immediately turn around, pushing a hand against Kazuaki’s face as if that would help anything. Oddly enough, though, it didn’t seem like there was anything that needed to… be helped, “Thank you for worrying about me, but really, we don’t need the pizza. Hitori is teaching me how to cook for myself…!”

“...Okay,” The delivery guy still seemed skeptical, mostly just because of Hitori’s strange behavior, “I guess I’ll leave, then.”

“Right,” Kazuaki nodded, then pulled out some money and handing it to him, “Sorry for the trouble, you can keep the change and eat the pizza yourself, if you want…” Then, once the delivery guy had thanked him and left, he burst into tears and turned to Hitori, “H-Hitori…! I think there’s something seriously wrong with me…! That guy, I, I wanted to eat him…”

“You… wanted to…” Hitori mumbled, leaning against the now-closed door and staring at his own hand, still dripping with blood, “But you… didn’t. You didn’t eat him,” He took a few deep breaths, “I’m immune, and… I mixed my blood with yours… you’re infected but…” He finally looked up, locking eyes with Kazuaki, “You didn’t go into a frenzy when you saw him, you didn’t…”

“Hitori, what are you talking about…?” Kazuaki asked, stepping closer to him and sniffling.

“Science,” Hitori answered, “I guess. I think that I just discovered what happens when you give immune blood to somebody recently infected. You… probably do still need to eat people, I’m not going to lie and tell you that everything’s dandy, but what is pretty good is that… you won’t just attack mindlessly anytime you see a human.”

“Is that an upside…??” Kazuaki asked, still absolutely confused.

“Yeah,” Hitori nodded, “It means you can still go outside without worrying about killing somebody and getting killed in turn by people who jump at the first sign of an apocalypse.”

“But… if I keep going outside like this, won’t other people get sick too?” He questioned, starting to hyperventilate, “I’m scared, Hitori…!”

“Don’t be scared. You can go outside just fine, I figured out what it is,” Hitori crossed his arms, suddenly becoming incredibly calm, “It’s airborne, but only in places with bad airflow. The disease can’t survive in the air if the air is moving around, Heartful House just doesn’t have a good ventilation system. That’s why it never traveled with me, as soon as I stepped outside I lost any of the contagions that might have attached to me. Besides, even if you do end up infecting a few other people, what does that matter? We don’t /know/ them.”

“Hitori, that’s a little bit…” He started, but then shook his head. Who was he to criticize ethics in this situation? If he made too convincing an argument, after all, he was only arguing against himself, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. The theater where I work has good ventilation anyway, so I guess I could just… keep acting the same as I always have?” He wondered aloud, “But wait, my house… doesn’t have good airflow… when Mom gets back from her trip…”

“That could be an issue, yeah. I’m… really not sure how she would handle being a zombie, from what I’ve seen of her, she’d probably be the type not to listen to anyone telling her that she should go to sleep… so she really would be zombified in full,” Hitori sighed, “Well, you could always come to live at Heartful House, if you’re worried about her.”

“Live there…? But what about…”

“Kazuaki, they’re not going to attack you now that you’re one of them,” He shrugged, “And if you’re living with me, I can make sure you stay functional, too. Have you slept in the past two days at all?”

“I didn’t sleep last night, but I did sleep the night before. I guess it wasn’t totally… y’know, yet,” Kazuaki muttered, “I’m just so incompetent always that being sleep deprived isn’t a lot different… I guess that I am sleep deprived, now that you mention it, but the thought would have never crossed my mind before…”

“That’s one of the strange symptoms of this thing, whatever it is. You get all the symptoms of not getting enough sleep, but you still don’t feel like you need to sleep, so you don’t until somebody actually goes ahead and brings it up,” Hitori explained, “And… that would explain why you were so clueless about cutting that apple. I gave you very specific instructions and you just completely ignored them.”

“Yeah…” Kazuaki trailed off, “Sorry about that…”

“Well you only ended up hurting yourself, so don’t apologize to me. Actually, don’t apologize at all. It’s only because you cut your hand that I was able to catch it early enough to give you some immune blood,” He hesitated a moment, “I’m… still sorry I did that, though, it was really strange and creepy of me. Even if it did end up helping you out in the end.”

“I’m not going to deny that. But I also am going to accept your apology,” Kazuaki nodded, wiping his eyes, “And I think it would be best if I didn’t stay here… but I swear I will help out a lot at Heartful House…! I will use all of my paychecks on bills.”

“You don’t have to use all of your money to help me. I think you’d have SIF withdrawal. You can buy one 50 scout every paycheck, at the very least,” He chuckled a bit, then sighed, “We’ll head over in a bit, then. Let’s get our hands bandaged up, finish making your sandwich, then you can work on getting your stuff together.”

Kazuaki nodded in agreement, so Hitori got to work on that tasklist, bandaging his own hand first since it was slightly more imperative. He was the one who was in pain from it, though he didn’t really care. He wouldn’t pretend that it didn’t hurt when he bled, he was still human, he was still a real person; but he was telling the truth when he said that he would prefer it hurt than to be numb to it. There were so many things now, that he had to become numb to. Had to become numb to all the stresses in his life, or he would fall apart, but he still needed to feel something, and pain in this sense was his crutch.

So he bandaged his hand, then bandaged Kazuaki’s, then helped him finish making the sandwich. It actually wasn’t horrible, shockingly enough, and with that Kazuaki was finished with lunch. He then went to his room and pulled an old suitcase out from the top of his closet to gather his things, and while he was working on that his phone rung, “Hitori, can you get that?” He asked, given that his hands were currently just a little too full.

“Sure thing,” Hitori nodded, then picked up the phone, “Hello?”

“That voice is too confident to be Kaz…” The voice on the other hand was unmistakably Kazuaki’s mother, “So lemme guess… The tutor dude? What’s your name again? Hi-something… Hisoka?”

“Hitori.”

“Right, that. You didn’t come for a few weeks, right? Is everything all right between you and Kaz?”

“Things between Kazuaki and I are fine, we just hit… I guess you could call it a rough patch, though it was entirely my fault. You see, Ms Nanaki, I am an asshole.”

“Oh, always joking around,” She laughed into the phone. Hitori could say just about anything to her, since he’d gotten her son’s grades into a passing zone, “I’m glad you were able to pull his grades up before he graduated, did I ever thank you for that?”

“Yes. Every single time we speak,” Hitori was consistently deadpan throughout the conversation.

“Now if only you could get him to move out! I feel like he’s just going to stay a freeloader forever, even with a high school education.”

“I wouldn’t say that, Ms Nanaki. In fact, I think he’s never been a freeloader at all. If you’ll recall, he often paid for his own food. But then, if you really do want him to move out, I believe I could arrange for that.”

“You’re such a nice boy, Hikaru-”

“Hitori. My name is Hitori. It’s not about to change.”

“Right, right, Hitori. You’re always sticking up for my good-for-nothing son, and you’re so polite. You definitely deserve better than him.”

“Deserve… better than him? Well first of all, you’re wrong, but more importantly, are you under the impression that Kazuaki and I are dating…?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Uh,” Hitori blinked, then glanced into the other room, where Kazuaki seemed to be struggling greatly with winding up his phone charger, “Honestly, Ms Nanaki, I’m not sure…”

“Well, he talks about you all the time, and you’ve been tutoring him for free and telling me that he’s not as useless as he is, so I thought that a budding romance was the only suitable explanation.”

“Yes, well, there’s also just something called friendship, Ms Nanaki, which is what I was under the impression my relationship with your son was. However, now that you bring it up, I’m honestly not sure if I would just consider it friendship after all…”

“Well, I need to go, I just had to call and check that Kaz was still alive. He is still alive, right?”

“Yeah, just busy at the moment. Have a nice day, Ms Nanaki.”

“You too, Hinata.”

“Hitori.”

“Right,” And with that, she hung up the phone, leaving Hitori standing there confused for just a moment before he returned to the same room as Kazuaki.

“That was my mom, right? How did it go…?” Kazuaki asked, having finally got the phone cord to do what he’d wanted it to.

“As well as anything ever goes with your mom. She called to check that you were alive, said mean things about you, the usual,” He sighed, leaning back against a wall, “I don’t much like her, sorry. She’s less competent than you, but still makes fun of you for it, and she can’t remember my name. She thought we were dating, and also that we should break up.”

Kazuaki just frowned, “Yeah, but I still don’t want to zombify her… even if she is really rude…” He hesitated a minute before turning to start at another, different wall, “I didn’t tell her that we were dating, if that’s what you’re wondering. I know that we aren’t.”

“Right,” Hitori nodded, though he still sounded a bit confused, and a silence hung between them for a few moments before he said anything else, “Anyway, finish packing up, and we’ll be on our way.”

Kazuaki nodded as well and did as he was told, then once he had anything he wanted to bring with him in the bag, regrouped with Hitori. On the walk back to Heartful House, neither one of them said much of anything, though Kazuaki stayed very close to Hitori the whole way along. Anytime he’d walked in the dark, even when he’d been lost in the worst part of town, even when he’d been walking around alone late at night, none of that was as frightening to him as this one walk in broad daylight was. He knew it wasn’t the end of anything, he knew that it wasn’t as if he was going into quarantine, even if he felt like he should.

However, something about being in this state… to feel so strangely, to know that he couldn’t even quite be considered human anymore, and to feel a nagging urge in the back of his head each time they passed by somebody; And something about following Hitori, Hitori who was constantly flipping between strong and weak in his eyes, intimidating and broken… And right now, he was certainly in the prior category. For him to be so calm and collected in a situation like this, it was nearly frightening.

But then, Kazuaki was the truly frightening one here, wasn’t he? If not for Hitori, he knew, he’d be even worse off. He wouldn’t understand what was happening. He probably would have attacked the delivery guy. He’d truly fall into a manner of inescapable uselessness, and simultaneously find himself a monster to be hated by the rest of the world. Wasn’t he still that, though? He certainly wasn’t completely safe to be around, and he was contagious. He carried within himself the very disease that so many had, for decades, thought of as that which would bring about the end-times.

If there was any time to hate himself, now was certainly it, but probably the strangest bit of the current situation was that while he certainly acknowledged and despised all of these issues, he found himself shockingly devoid of self-loathing in the sense he was expecting. As it was, he hardly felt any worse than usual. Becoming a flesh-eating, diseased creature just felt the same as any other mistake he made at any other time. Maybe it was because he was with Hitori, or maybe the disease itself worked out ways to keep those it infected alive. If it was a brain-based thing, of course it wouldn’t want to risk getting shot in the head by its own host…

Not that he would know anything about that. He hardly understood a thing about science.

Luckily, the walk wasn’t actually all that long between his home and Heartful House, so he didn’t have to think about things too much or pass by too many… unfortunately delicious-looking people before arrival. Once getting there he walked right in behind Kazuaki, and saw somebody he didn’t recognize, who looked up and stared at him in confusion before turning to look at Hitori instead, “Hitori? What’s going on? He’s standing right there and I don’t even have the smallest urge to eat him…”

“Well you see, Momo,” Hitori slung an arm around Kazuaki, smiling, but shaking his head at the same time and seeming to be a bit off, “This is my good friend, Kazuaki Nanaki. He came by here a few nights ago when I wasn’t feeling well, to check on me, and turns out that he caught whatever you all have. So you’re not going to want to eat him.”

“I see…” She nodded slowly, standing up and looking him over. She and Kanta were both still in middle school themselves, but just barely, being about two years older than Nageki (despite recent developments rendering him the more responsible one of the three) so she actually had a bit of height to her, not needing to look up very much to see the top of Kazuaki’s head, “Hitori, did you get him sick on purpose so we could meet him?”

“Of course not,” Hitori shook his head, sighing, “I never told him to come here. In fact, I told him to stay away. The fact that you’re able to meet him now is just an unexpected positive in what I would consider to be a negative situation. What’s with all you kids and assuming the worst of me?”

“I didn’t mean that, Hitori, I just thought that maybe you wanted your family to be able to meet your boyfriend,” She giggled a bit, winking, “I mean, being a zombie’s not all that terrible, after all… And if you’re getting serious, I would be pretty angry if you didn’t bring him home to meet us eventually.”

“Why does everybody think that-” Hitori groaned, pressing his fingers against his forehead then turning around, “I don’t have work tonight, and I’m exhausted, so I’m going to make something up ahead of time for dinner, then go to sleep. When dinnertime rolls around, Momo, do you think you can handle it? Just use the microwave to heat up what I make. No metal in the microwave, no real cooking. Get Nageki to supervise you to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” She nodded, then turned to Kazuaki and whispered, “He thinks that I don’t know what ‘good friend’ is code for, but I’m fourteen, and I only stopped going to school a few months ago. Maybe I’m not as worldly as a highschooler, but I know that at least…”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Kazuaki shook his head with a sheepish smile, and she looked shocked, “Hitori really did just mean that I’m his good friend. No double meanings there. We’re not like, an item, or anything. I mean… I don’t think we are, at least. Nothing official, anyway, if it turns out that we are…” He trailed off, starting to tear up, “Sorry, I’m not making any sense…”

“You’re not,” Momo agreed, then stroked her chin as she thought about things for a minute, “Do you mean that you’re not dating but you want to be? Do you mean that you are dating but you’ve never actually said you’re dating? We just don’t know.”

“I guess probably the first one?” He said hesitantly, but then made a sort of squeaking sound and waved his hands in front of himself, “I-I mean…! It’s not quite like that! Or maybe it is…? I… I like Hitori, and I think I’ve made it really obvious, but if he’s noticed then I guess he just doesn’t care…”

“Hey, I don’t think that’s true,” Momo frowned, trying to reassure him, “He’s just got a lot to deal with right now, and noticing romance is probably pretty low on his list.”

“I guess you’re right,” Kazuaki nodded, “This is really pretty selfish of me, huh? He’s got so much… so much going on, and here I am being upset that he’s not my boyfriend…” His crying intensified, and he pressed his hands into his face.

“Hey, stop crying,” Momo pouted slightly, crossing her arms, “I know elementary schoolers who cry less than you. In fact, I think that Hoppe probably doesn’t even cry half as often as you do, and I only just met you today… Hitori made you sound much more competent.”

“W-Well… That’s Hitori for you…” He chuckled sheepishly, trying to wipe his eyes, “He’s always telling people I’m better than I am… he’s so nice…”

“Well. I think you’ve already met Nageki, but would you like to meet some of the others?” Momo asked, already starting to walk to another room, “After all, we haaaave all heard things about you.”

“Uh… Okay,” Kazuaki nodded, following her into the other room.

“Hey, so this is Kazuaki Nanaki,” Momo introduced him, “Yes, he is the same Kazuaki that Hitori was telling us about before.”

“Whoa!” Kanta was the first one to respond, grabbing his crutches from beside the chair he was sitting and approaching Kazuaki, “It’s great to meet you! I’m just gonna take a wild guess and say that, since you’re here, and standing, you somehow turned out to either be immune, or you got infected yourself.”

“That second one…” He answered, looking away, “I visited here once, when everyone except Hitori and Fujishiro were asleep, and apparently that was enough to get me sick…”

“Cool,” Kanta nodded, grinning, “So, you’re going to be living with us now? Well…” His grin turned to a smirk as he looked around the room, “I use the term ‘living’ pretty loosely. I’m not quite sure we’d be considered alive anymore. More like undead.”

When Kazuaki glanced around the room, he saw a peculiar glint in the eyes of the other orphans, and found himself bursting into tears again at the confirmation that this wasn’t just any old sickness, no, of course it wasn’t. It was a sickness which invaded every part of his being, distorting into something that could neither be called human nor alive. He hid his face, but it was obvious that he was sobbing. Pyonpyon walked up to him and tapped his knee to get his attention, “Hey. Why are you crying?”

“I’m crying because I’m dead…!” Kazuaki wailed, backing up against a wall and shaking his head.

“Undead. Not dead, not alive. Because we aren’t dead… but I don’t think we can really be considered living either, with a disease like this, that…” Momo joined the conversation, speaking slowly as she worked through her thoughts, “Changes the way that we act.”

“That’s awful!” He cried out, shaking his head, “I’m awful!”

“D-does that mean we’re… awful too…?” Hoppe asked, sounding as if she herself was also about to start crying. So Nageki groaned and decided it was about time he stepped in.

“No, no. Kazuaki Nanaki, you see, he just thinks that everything is awful. Remember what Hitori told us about him being emotionally delicate? Well, imagine that multiplied by twelve. Nanaki, back me up here, does this make you any more upset than forgetting to set your alarm before going to sleep?”

“No…” He whined, pulling his hands away from his face, “I don’t know why but this just feels like… another small mistake… it isn’t, but it feels that way…”

“Right, see?” Nageki turned to the children, “It’s just a small thing. You weren’t all that happy to find out you were sick either, did you? Just because you don’t mind being sick doesn’t mean it didn’t upset you at first.”

“I guess that makes sense… so he’s just a big crybaby?” Pyonpyon asked.

“Hmm,” Nageki looked at him, then nodded, “Yes. Exactly.”

“Hey…!” Kazuaki protested, his crying intensifying again, just proving the truth in the words that Nageki had just agreed with.

“All right, guys…” Another voice joined the conversation, and Kazuaki looked up to see Hitori leaning against the doorway, looking as if he was hardly even supporting any of his own weight on his feet, “Dinner’s on the counter, you’ll just have to heat it up a little bit later, though I put foil on top of it so it’ll at least stay lukewarm. Momo, remember what I said. Nageki, you’re in charge,” And without saying anything else, he left the room again, practically stumbling over himself as he moved.

“Is Hitori okay?” Hoppe asked, small voice sounding very worried as she stared down the hallway, “He didn’t look okay…”

“He’s fine. Just stressed out,” Nageki explained, then sighed, “Well, overstressed, so he’s not exactly fine, but hopefully that’s going to change soon. I did some research, apparently stress can cause headaches, stomachaches, all sorts of problems…”

“But nothing life-threatening, right?” Momo asked.

“I don’t think so. As long as it is just stress, he should be fine, but I don’t think he’d tell us if it was something else,” He frowned, then turned to Kazuaki, “But you’re the same as age as him, maybe he’d tell you…”

“Maybe…” Kazuaki nodded, “I’ll go talk to him…” And he went after Hitori, not actually catching up until he reached Hitori’s room. Heartful House seemed to be a very nice place, seeing as it had separate rooms for its residents rather than just putting a bunch of bunk beds all in one room. The past caretakers were not the ones who made that decision, but rather the original owner, who cared very much about providing for those who couldn’t provide for themselves. Kind of like Hitori, actually, “Hey, Hitori…? Are you sure you’re feeling okay…?”

“No,” He gave a straight answer for once, holding out an arm from where he was lying face-down on his bed, not under any blankets, “Come over here.”

Kazuaki walked over and took Hitori’s hand. It was the bandaged one, and he held it in his own, “What’s the problem, then…?”

“I’m… not sure…” He trailed off, hand limp in Kazuaki’s, “It was just stress. It was, but this is different. Before, I was just exhausted and headachey, but this is…” His grip suddenly tightened, “I can’t describe it, but I’m in pain. Not just exhausted. Not just a headache.”

Kazuaki frowned, sitting down on the bed next to him, not letting go of his hand, “Pain like how…? Are you going to be all right…?”

“Pain like literally every part of my body hurts right now, but not like… I can’t explain it, but I know I’m not going to die. It won’t kill me-” He coughed a few times, then curled up, “I must have just had something bad to eat for breakfast, or something. I’ll be fine.”

“You say that you’re going to be fine, but how can you possibly know that…?” Kazuaki put his free hand up to his face, trying to stop the tears, but failing as usual, “Hitori, I’m glad you actually told me what was wrong, but you still can’t just… you can’t just put everyone else before yourself all the time…”

“Whatever’s wrong with me is nothing. I’m immune, after all,” He was insistent, but his voice sounded entirely listless, “It’s just some normal, regular illness. If it gets any worse, I can actually go to see a doctor about it. It’s more important that you, you and all the others… are okay…” He trailed off, coughing again.

“Hitori…” Kazuaki clearly disapproved, not letting go of his hand, but moving the other away from his face in order to lean over Hitori.

“Look, how about this?” He finally decided to compromise, “If I’m not feeling better in the morning, I’ll get over to the walk-in clinic and have them check me out. Does that work for you?”

Kazuaki just sniffled and nodded, sitting up straight.

“You… still need to get some sleep, before you get too dysfunctional,” Hitori started, curling up even more without letting go of Kazuaki’s hand, “I’m going to… and you should too…” And with that he’d fallen asleep right where he was, as he often did, though there was a sort of strangeness to this particular occasion. He was actually on a bed for once, but still not under the blankets, and he still looked like he was in pain, curled up like that.

Kazuaki just sighed, lying down next to him and still holding onto his hand. He didn’t want to let go, not right now, not when he’d just seen Hitori make the switch between those two ways he always seemed to be. Just a few minutes had transformed him from cool and collected to more fragile than an antique vase in any children’s cartoon. He felt like Hitori at this point might just break, or possibly split in two. There was the Hitori who acted like he knew what he was doing, and the one who was… afraid.

This Hitori. Kazuaki just lay there for a little while, but he was supposed to get some sleep, wasn’t he? Hitori had told him that he ought to, that he would definitely feel better when he woke up. Unlike him. For an illness to be so easily managed as this one, to be so easily figured out, it almost felt unreal. It completely felt like Hitori’s words about it being more important than any normal human illness were false. Maybe they weren’t exactly living anymore, in this state, but that meant that it wouldn’t kill them. They could rest assured in the knowledge that, as long as they listened when told to go to sleep, as long as they ate what they had to when they had to, they could remain just as able-bodied as they’d been prior to infection.

Other illnesses in this world, well, they were all wildcards. Anything could happen, anything at all. There was no simple knowledge that doing certain things would keep you safe, and keep you healthy, and it was for that reason that Kazuaki worried so much about Hitori. If there even was anything like that, he doubted that Hitori would even bother to do it. But he couldn’t think too hard on that at the moment. He had to go to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Log 00001  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Written Log.  
This is the first log I’ve actually put in for the project… whoops! I have all the research notes, of course, but I sort of forgot about this whole logging thing. Usually I just let the others handle it, but I guess this project’s a bit too unique for that. Anyway, you probably don’t wanna hear about all that studying we did of existing relationships between humans and animals that are mutually beneficial!

What really matters is what we’ve done with that information, and I really do think that we’re breaking through! Of course, there have been some… complications, with the test subjects so far. The parasite does exactly what we wanted it to do! It attaches to the brain and keeps it animated post-mortem, as long as the brain itself remains unharmed! But… there is one little problem with it. It does the other part of its job a little too well. It’s supposed to only need sustenance in the form of sharing calorie intake with the host, but it doesn’t do that quite right.

In fact, it seems that it will begin to reject food from the host’s body altogether if not fed… well, human flesh. That’s certainly a worrying factor, but nothing we can’t work out!

Another thing to consider is that one of the test subjects didn’t seem to take to the parasite very well at all. Closer examination proved, not exactly an immunity, but rather a genetic incompatibility. It seems that the parasite cannot be transmitted to these people through the air, and if it does find itself inside one of these humans, it will disregard all attempts to transmit further or behave as it should and instead focus on destroying its host.

Seeing as tests have proved that, well… I have this weird gene thing myself, I’ll have to be very careful not to receive any fluids from somebody who is infected! Although, unfortunately, we are running out of samples of the parasite. Correction, we have none. A… catastrophic event, shall we say, destroyed the wing in which not only all of the test subjects, but the one who we originally harvested the parasite from were unfortunately killed, and their corpses burnt beyond recognition or sample recovery…

It was truly a tragedy.

But, we can’t focus on the past! This parasite, if we can alter it to a state where it won’t do any of these troubling things, has the potential to bring humanity to new heights entirely! Why, I dare say it has the power to grant immortality! What’s a couple of losses on the way to that end, right? I’ll just have to be more careful with the project, when we find somebody else who it has naturally grown in. I’m sure there’s another one out there somewhere… 

 

-  
Hitori felt okay the next morning.

In fact, Hitori felt “okay” for many mornings following that morning. There were days when he would suddenly seem as if something was wrong, but he never complained about it again, and that was still just a few days. Just occasionally. Of course he could handle the occasional day filled with excruciating pain, there was no reason to worry. It wasn’t constant. There were all sorts of reasons he could be… achey. This was beyond aches, of course, but he couldn’t quite come up with a symptom. It was a sort of terrifying, burning sensation that felt as if it was tearing at his bones; he couldn’t very well say that, though. He’d just manage.

So he did manage. He managed for what worked out to be several years, actually. Several years keeping several secrets tucked away. He graduated High School, and Momo and Kanta were third years in it. Three years, wasn’t it? Three years that he spent like that, three years with days filled with pain at random. Only one year, though, since he started working harder again. Nobody understood, of course. Kazuaki was still working just as much as he ever had, still helping out. The younger residents of Heartful House wanted to help out, but it was difficult when they couldn’t go outside. Nageki was trying to get a job, but it was difficult. He was still worried that there was a chance he carried the disease, so finding employment with good airflow, at his age, was proving to be a challenge.

“Nageki,” Hitori started quietly one day, after all of the zombies, Kazuaki included, had been sent to bed, “I need some advice.”

“What, you’re asking me?” Nageki raised an eyebrow, looking up from his current book, “You’re the adult here. And the one who actually does things.”

“Yeah, I’m asking you. You’ve always been smart, and… I guess, wise for your age,” Hitori shrugged, staring down at his shoes, “I met somebody today. If… I did what he’s asking me to do for him, then I wouldn’t have to work nearly as often. It would solve a lot of the financial problems we have around here…”

“But he’s asking you to do something you’d rather not do?” Nageki questioned, then sighed and closed his book, “So that’s it… Hitori, I’m not sure you should…”

“How did you-”

“Figure out what you were talking about? Well for one, I’m not a child anymore, I’m fifteen, and I have the internet entirely at my disposal for distance school. It’s not difficult to end up knowing things, in this day and age,” He looked away, “Besides. You’ve been drugging, kidnapping, killing, and butchering people for years. That’s the only thing I could think of that you’d be hesitant to do, at this point. I don’t think that you should. There’s other ways for us to make money.”

“It’s not like it would be the first time I did something like this,” Hitori mumbled, barely even wanting to be heard. But of course Nageki heard it. Nothing ever really got past Nageki.

“You mean,” Nageki started, then stopped. His voice was uneven, and he looked momentarily shocked before managing to throw back on his usual demeanor, “That’s what you were doing back then, isn’t it? That’s the extra odd jobs. That’s what you’ve been doing lately…”

“I’m sorry, I just, we need the money, Nageki. Tutoring just doesn’t pay enough to cover all of our expenses…” He shook his head, also losing his own grip on a collected appearance, though he hid it behind his hands, “That’s the only reason.”

“What, has Kazuaki stopped helping?” Nageki asked, more confused than angry, “You stopped doing this when he started helping out, you went back to just tutoring, right? So why this, why now, again? Hitori, I’m just worried about you. How are you even managing something like this?”

“It’s not so difficult,” He shrugged, then chuckled under his breath sarcastically, “I just pretend I don’t care. Same way I manage anything. If I don’t think it matters, what happens to me, then I can’t really get hurt. Because I don’t care. No, that’s the truth. The truth, Nageki, I don’t care. I have to do this, I have to pay for all of the expenses here…” He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, “A year ago, the owners passed away. I have to make all the payments now, that’s twice as many as before. Even with Kazuaki’s help it isn’t enough. So I’ll do what I have to, to take care of you. That’s more important than my comfort, anyhow.”

“No, it isn’t, Hitori…” Nageki protested, shaking his head, “How many times do we have to have this conversation? No wonder you were so stressed you started getting sick. Hitori, this is not okay. Because you’re not okay.”

“Me? Not okay? No, no, I’m fine…” He muttered, moving his hands to hug himself, though it revealed his face. He definitely didn’t look fine, “I can just pretend it didn’t happen. Because nothing happened, right? I’m okay, and I’ve always been okay, and I’ll always be okay. The people at Heartful House are the only trustworthy people in this entire awful world and I need to protect them. I need to protect all of you. I need you to understand how much I care. You mean the world to me, you were there for me when I needed you, when I…” He shook his head, grinning, though the grin was something straight out of Hell, “No, that can’t be right, because nothing happened… I just need to protect you because you’re… so very important to me…”

Nageki had to just stand there for a moment, staring at Hitori. He hadn’t the faintest clue of how to handle this, how to deal with Hitori in this peculiar state. He had to try, though, “Hitori, you’ve made it clear many times how much you care about us. You don’t have to work this hard. You don’t have to do this to yourself. We’ll figure something out.”

“This /is/ figuring something out. I just have to,” He froze for a second, gripping his scarf tightly in his hands, “It’s just, just a little bit more than usual, just this one time, and I’d have enough money to pay all the bills for months. I can save up from tutoring in that time, and what I save up can carry us a few more months… And that’s… something…”

“It’s not something. It’s nothing at all, because I’m not going to let you do this, Hitori,” Nageki insisted, stepping closer, but resisting the urge to grab Hitori and shake him by the shoulders, “It’s obviously not good for you, it’s hurting you before you’ve even done it.”

“That’s okay. I can get hurt. You’re more important,” He stepped away from Nageki, and sighed, “I’m going to go to sleep, Nageki. Goodnight.”

Somehow Nageki felt as if nothing had been accomplished in that conversation.

That feeling was completely correct, of course, though the consequences wouldn’t rear their ugly head until months later. At first, it seemed fine of course. Hitori was very good at making things seem fine, he always had been. The finances were covered, and he started working more regularly again. Was less consistently exhausted, and it was okay. Better than okay, it might seem, if not for the fact that he was more easily startled than before. Where he’d never hesitated to have a certain level of closeness with Kazuaki, he now shied away;

The real trouble, however, was not one of those things. Those were small changes to his disposition, which would fade with time. Hopefully, would fade with time. Nageki was the only one who really noticed the difference, knowing the cause, and he found himself concerned that this had been the straw to break the camel’s back. Hitori was definitely not okay, doing this hadn’t been okay for him. It was obvious. The real issue came, however, the day when Hitori collapsed.

It had been a normal day, if not for that, it would have continued on and possibly been a good day. That wasn’t what happened, though. In the middle of breakfast, in front of everybody, Hitori turned to the side, coughed exactly three times, then folded in on himself and toppled to the ground. Just like the last time he’d fallen, way back when, Nageki and Kazuaki had both immediately gotten to his side. Unlike the last time, though, Hitori wasn’t conscious to give any comment on the matter.

“H-Hitori!?” Kazuaki questioned, pushing against his shoulder just enough to turn him over onto his back instead of his stomach. The move revealed a strange black sludge had stained the floor partially under where he had fallen, and the smallest bit of additional investigation revealed that the source of that had been Hitori’s mouth, when he’d coughed, “What is… What in the world is…”

“Well for one thing, it’s disgusting. For another thing, that does not seem normal. For a third thing, I think that we need to get Hitori to a hospital right now immediately,” Nageki didn’t sound anywhere near as panicked as he actually was, knowing that freaking out to that level would certainly just make things worse, especially in front of Kazuaki and the other orphans, some of whom were still pretty small.

“The hospital?? But we can’t call emergency services, we can’t have people come here!” Kazuaki, however, had no such qualms over showing his own panic, “I don’t want to get any EMTs eaten!”

“We can, we just have to meet them outside is all. You can pick up Hitori, right?” He asked, at least thinking through the situation rationally as he pulled his phone out.

“Yeah. It’s not hard,” Kazuaki nodded as he leaned down and carefully lifted Hitori, not wanting to move him too quickly in case it made him worse, then took him outside while Nageki followed, phone already at his ear.

“Don’t do anything while we’re out. In fact, just take a nap, okay?” Nageki said to the others just before the phone picked up, then turned his attention to the call, “Yeah, my older brother just sort of coughed a few times then collapsed out of nowhere. I live at Heartful House, if you send an ambulance over we can meet you right outside. Thanks.”

It wasn’t long at all before they arrived, and luckily didn’t ask too many questions or try to get into the house. In the ambulance Nageki stated that it was probably in their best interest to open the windows, and thankfully, they listened to him. He didn’t even have to try and explain Kazuaki’s state of being definitely contagious, thankfully. He wasn’t so sure he’d be capable of looking a medical professional in the face and talking about zombies with a completely straight face. Scratch that, he knew he wouldn’t be capable of it.

He knew that airflow in actual hospitals was purposefully not so great; after all, that would generally cause disease to spread more. This, whatever it was, seemed to be a fairly intelligent illness. Maybe it was more inconvenient, to not survive in air that was moving, but it did make quarantine an incredibly countereffective measure to take. Anyone who was locked in with somebody infected would be infected themself, or else killed. And if somebody had only just been infected, and was still contagious but not showing any of the symptoms just yet (as there were at least 24 hours between infection and showing symptoms, so proved by Kazuaki) then the supposed apocalypse measure of locking yourself inside would only lead to more problems.

It was almost as if this disease was some sort of biological weapon. Designed to trick the human mind into becoming infected in the effort to avoid that very same thing. So the idea of going inside a hospital in this state was not one that Nageki was incredibly keen on. Nonetheless, he knew that he had to; they couldn’t just send Hitori in all by himself, and so he found himself inside, though he did come up with what was hopefully at least a somewhat useful solution. He was able to get masks from the receptionist when he mentioned that he had a genetic immune disorder, and was worried that he might catch something in the hospital. It wasn’t a lie, so he didn’t feel bad about it.

Besides, the lobby did have better airflow than the rest of the hospital, and that was where he and Kazuaki were seated for a good portion of time while they examined Hitori. They did have the option of being in the room with him, yes, but medical things had always made Nageki somewhat uncomfortable, and Kazuaki couldn’t be trusted without somebody with him who was both functional and conscious, leaving him stuck with Nageki as well.

He was afraid, afraid for Hitori. Both of them were, actually, but Kazuaki was the only one who really showed it. He was continuously kicking at the floor in his seat, holding his arms around himself and going in and out of a tearful state. Nageki did stop the floor-kicking after a while though, when he realized just how hard Kazuaki was doing it. That was certainly going to leave a bruise on his toe, not that he’d notice. They never noticed, when things hurt. It would be seriously dangerous, if not for the fact that they also didn’t seem the least bit impacted by the injuries they received. Well, excluding blows to the head. Strangely enough, some of the others had reported pain when they’d hit their head on the underside of a table or things like that. Well, this disease couldn’t numb everything, he guessed.

Eventually, the waiting was over, and the two of them were told to go to Hitori’s room to hear what was going on with him as soon as he woke up, so the nurse wouldn’t have to repeat herself when giving the diagnosis. They were told this in a confused tone, and were immediately suspicious of what could have happened. When they got to the room, Hitori was already awake, though he didn’t say anything when they walked in, just glaring at the ceiling.

“All right. Now that you’re all here, and awake, I’m going to tell you what the doctors found…” The nurse mumbled, staring at the clipboard in front of her, “It’s a very strange case. We actually had to call in somebody who has exhibited skills in research to determine exactly what was going on here. Doctor Souma, in case you were wondering who. It appears that there is some sort of… well, genetic makeup would consider it to be a parasite, but it’s not actually functioning the way parasites usually do. It seems to be attacking his body, though projections drawn up by Dr Souma prove that they’re generally ineffective; it can cause chronic pain, but given that it needs to retreat to multiply more after each fight with the immune system, most people would die of old age long before it would actually kill them…”

“Most… M-most people…?” Kazuaki asked, covering his mouth and tearing up, feeling overwhelmed by this information, and being in the presence of a regular human on top of that. He didn’t want to stick around much longer, but he’d have to stay until he understood what was going on here.

“That’s right. See, it’s this parasite which caused the sludge. It seems to be depositing the remnants of any cells it destroys into the lungs. However, the reason it was able to cause such an issue is because it seems that his immune system has been compromised,” The nurse frowned as she looked closer at the clipboard, “It’s a recent development, not a genetic disorder. During the process of blood testing, it seems that the mystery parasite wasn’t the only issue discovered…” She bit her lip, looking at Nageki, “You’re pretty young, maybe you should leave the room.”

“No, I’m not going to leave,” Nageki crossed his arms, sighing heavily as he leaned against a wall, then glanced over at Hitori, who had still not said a word, though he’d turned over onto his side to glare across the room rather than upwards. He took another deep breath before turning and locking eyes with the nurse, “What you were going to say, it’s that he tested HIV positive, isn’t it? That’s the only thing I can think of, that causes problems to the immune system and you would prefer a ‘child’ not be in the room for.”

“Mm,” The nurse just made a sort of strange sound, nodded as she too took a glance at Hitori.

“Of course he did. He’s a magnet for disaster…” Nageki mumbled, shaking his head in disapproval, “As if it wasn’t bad enough on its own… God, he’s like the walking manifestation of Murphy’s law…”

“Th-that…” Kazuaki tried to add in, but just found his voice fading into sobbing, hiding his face in his hands and shaking his head.

“Nanaki,” Nageki started, staring at him with a particularly fed-up deadpan, “He’s not seeing anybody. Not romantically, at least. He’s just got some really bad ideas about how to handle the finances at Heartful House.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better…!” Kazuaki wailed, “No, that makes me feel even worse…! That means that somebody… somebody did this to him, and he didn’t even… want to…” He lost his words again, now dropping to his knees right there on the floor, earning himself a strange look from the nurse.

“Well…” She started hesitantly, still staring at Kazuaki, then squinted one eye and turned to Nageki, “Is he… okay?”

“About as okay as can be expected when somebody who’s really emotionally fragile hears something like this happened to his sort-of-boyfriend. So yeah. He’s not okay, but given the situation, I’d say his reaction is completely appropriate,” Nageki shrugged.

“Okay…” She didn’t seem convinced, but flipped to the next page of her clipboard, “In any case, we drained the fluid from his lungs, and though we can’t do anything about the pain, if he starts taking a drug cocktail to boost his immune system back up, that will fix both of the issues at hand-”

“Fuck off,” Hitori spoke up from where he lay on the cot, causing everybody in the room to immediately turn to him. Those weren’t exactly the greatest first words to hear out of anybody since they woke up, and particularly not in this situation.

“Excuse me…?” The nurse questioned, looking offended.

“I said fuck off. Stop making it out to be so easy,” He muttered, “You heard how this happened to me, do you really think I’m in a position to afford any sort of treatment? I shouldn’t even be here right now…”

“Hitori-” Nageki started, but was cut off.

“So what, I passed out? I’m narcoleptic, that’s no big deal,” It had been a different sort of passing out, but his arguments were in no way currently logical, “I’m fine, really. It’s fine. I can handle it. I just… I’m just worried what’s going to happen to you, when I die. And now I’m more worried, because spending money on this hospital visit… You shouldn’t have done this,” And when his eyes met Nageki’s, Nageki understood that wasn’t his only concern. The disease that infected Kazuaki, and all of the orphans, Hitori had wanted to keep it hidden. Keep it under wraps. Coming to the hospital was dangerous, and the news he’d heard only confirmed his fears that they couldn’t stay under the radar. The parasite they’d found, it had to be the same thing that caused the… zombification.

His fears were immediately confirmed even more when the door opened again, and he heard that name again from the nurse, “Oh! Dr Souma! What are you doing here? Didn’t you get enough samples?”

“The samples I had are all dead. Every blood cell and every parasite. It seems they destroyed each other,” He said simply, glancing at Hitori, “I can’t imagine any more samples would behave any differently, so no. I’m not here for more samples. I’m actually here because I mean to examine the people who brought him here.”

“No,” Nageki said simply, crossing his arms, “I refuse a medical examination, as does Nanaki,” Kazuaki nodded in agreement.

“I’m afraid that I can’t accept that,” Souma sounded completely calm, a very different calm than Nageki’s, different from Hitori’s. It was relaxed and cold, all at the same time, as if he was ordering an execution while receiving a spa treatment, “Medical consent is, in this case, a concept that is to be considered absolutely null and void. I made contact with one of the top researchers in the country, and he informed me that learning more about this parasite could be a matter of international importance. Don’t worry, I don’t need to do any procedures. I just need a small sample of blood from each of you, so little that even somebody with chronic anemia would hardly notice.”

“I don’t wanna!” Kazuaki protested, “If you try and stick a needle in me, then I /will/ bite you.”

“I deal with children just like you all the time,” The nurse was exasperated, “How do you expect to bite somebody with that mask on, after all?” And then she pulled on the back of the mask’s strings, effectively securing it on his face. The moment Dr Souma grabbed his arm, he froze. Something about the grip this particular doctor had, made him petrified to move at all. Strangely violet eyes stared back into his own as he had his blood taken. Not much, just a little. Little bit of that blood which was colored so strangely, so incorrectly. Then he was released, and started bawling as he went and hid in the corner of the room.

“What a useless person,” The doctor spoke as if it was just another observation, then turned to Nageki, “I trust you will not be so troublesome? Please, try to understand, this is for the good of mankind. Your reluctance only serves as proof that you have what I need,” He stepped closer to Nageki, who took one step backward, but then stopped and stood still, sighing as he held out his arm. Hitori was silent again, because he had nothing good to say. He wanted to protest against this, but he knew that at this point, there was nothing he could do. He was defeated.


	8. Chapter 8

Log 00002  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Video Log.

Ryuuji grinned, waving at the camera he had set up, “Hey! So I thought I would try out making a video log today, since I have a couple of people to introduce! Today really is a great day!” He stood up and almost twirled a little, “We’ve found another sample! Not just a sample, but three different incidences of the parasite!”

He then picked up the camera, carrying it with him across the office then holding it out at arm’s length to include both himself and a much-more serious looking scientist in the frame, swinging his other arm around him, “This is Isa Souma, the great doctor who discovered the samples! Apparently he’d read one of the papers my team had released on the parasite’s future potential and recognized the reaction between it and genetically incompatible blood!”

“...Right,” He just nodded simply, “It was a very fascinating paper, so it was easy to realize that a parasite which was trying to do nothing but destroy its host would have to be this one, in the body of someone incompatible. It was difficult to obtain the samples from those who accompanied him, but I am glad I did.”

“I’m glad you did too!” Ryuuji beamed, “Not only did you find us another patient zero, but you also discovered something we didn’t even think to test! What happens when somebody who is newly infected is given incompatible blood? The parasite outright loses its ability to completely take over cognitive processes and send its host into a frenzy of starving bloodlust! It truly is fascinating! Of course, we don’t need that sample in particular, as it will be easy enough to recreate on our own.”

“Might I also suggest looking elsewhere for more genetically incompatible samples? The one that I discovered at the hospital would not make a very good research subject, given that he has an unrelated blood-transmitted disease which could skew the results.”

“Right, right,” Ryuuji nodded, “If worst comes to worst, we can always bring him in at a later date. Oh, that reminds me! I have one other person to introduce!”

“How would… that… remind you of…” Souma seemed confused, just staring at Ryuuji and glancing somewhere out of view.

“Who knows, but it did!” He shrugged, moving to another part of the room, “This is-”

“My name is Tohri Nishikikouji!” He butted in,introducing himself with a grand flourish of his hand, “A now-indispensable member of this respectable research team!”

“Right, that,” Ryuuji nodded, “He’s here from engineering to help me make the testing wing a little bit less… prone to explosions. It was a stroke of true luck to find this new sample, we can’t go losing this one too!

“I will come up with suitable architecture posthaste! After all, research cannot resume until the testing wing has been completed,” Tohri noted, crossing his arms, “Although, I do not see why Doctor Souma didn’t find some way to hold onto the sample in the meantime…”

“Well without a proper testing wing in place, we’d have to keep the sample around us, and while that’s safe for me, I don’t believe either of you would appreciate being infested by the parasite yourselves at this point in its development…” Ryuuji noted, then shrugged, “I don’t believe retrieving the sample will be too much of a problem. I’ll just go in, grab him, then get out. The, well, the people upstairs want to send guards along with me, but I’m going to try and convince them not to. I want to cause as few problems as I possibly can, after all!”

-  
Much to Hitori’s surprise, nothing came of that day. The day when he thought for sure that he’d been defeated, that everything he’d worked to keep hidden and keep safe for all these years was ruined, shattered into a thousand pieces. Nothing came of that crushing defeat, though. He was free to go, as were Kazuaki and Nageki, and he never heard another word from or about that hospital. He remained alert and afraid for a few days afterwards, of course, but that faded by the time two weeks had passed without issue. He didn’t keep up on the news in any fashion, so he couldn’t have known that in those few days he still worried all hell had broken loose there. He couldn’t have known that the reason he didn’t hear anything was because anybody who could have told him anything was dead, zombified, or hiding. Couldn’t have known that while Isa Souma managed to get away without infection, the nurse wasn’t so lucky. Neither was anyone else she went on to interact with.

As far as Hitori was concerned, none of that had happened, because he didn’t hear about it. Even if he did hear about it, chances were that he wouldn’t care. None of what was happening was being related to him, being connected to him, so he would face no repercussions for it. Actions without consequences were easily ignored.

Two weeks without issue and he’d stopped worrying, but three weeks would have been a better period of time to wait before dropping his suspicions. Perhaps if he hadn’t discarded his fears so much, he would have been just as intent on getting home as soon as he finished work as he’d been when he was worried. Maybe he couldn’t have prevented the incident, but surely if he’d still known something might have gone wrong, he wouldn’t have been so incredible affected by it.

As it was, he wasn’t expecting anything to go wrong. He wasn’t afraid, or paranoid, because everything had gone back to its usual routine, more or less. The only change that had occurred, the only difference in the routine was that Nageki now told him every so often that he really ought to get the medicine, and he would always refuse. He couldn’t afford it, and that was that. He had a few months, at least, to try and get things sorted out before the combination of his compromised immune system and the incompatibility with the parasite killed him. He knew that it would, of course, but he had time. Not a lot of time, but he did have it.

He’d spend that time working, working hard to ensure that when he was gone they could manage without him. He’d always known that something like this might happen, and he couldn’t even say that it really bothered him. It was almost… convenient. For a long time coming he’d been in a peculiar state where he wouldn’t mind dying, so much, but he wasn’t going to seek death either. He had too many responsibilities, too many things to do, after all. He couldn’t just leave an awful world like this behind when there were so many things he still had to do in it.

This, however, this was just a simple tragedy. It wasn’t by his own hand, after all. He wasn’t leaving the world behind in an effort of defiance, but rather just… leaving. He would do everything he could to fulfill those responsibilities in the meantime, though. He had gained a lot of trust in Nageki over the years, being in such an odd and vaguely dangerous situation did happen to have the effect of disabling his prior overbearing behavior. It was easy to freak out over the everyday dangers in life when those were the biggest problems somebody could possibly face, but it seemed he’d failed in his efforts to keep his siblings from growing up too quickly. Nageki was responsible, smart, and trustworthy. Hitori knew that once he was gone, he could count on Nageki to keep the others (and Kazuaki) in line.

Well, that secondary bit there was… debatable. He and Kazuaki had entirely strayed away from the topic since that day, but he could tell that it wasn’t out of his mind in any sense. It manifested in small statements, little things which had changed in his speech and behavior. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without you”, changed to “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

Hitori let him get close again, though. There was less reason to deny it, now. Though he still flinched occasionally at surprising contact, it wasn’t much to think about. Kazuaki knew now, after all, and the guilt of being near him while holding such a disgusting secret had been lifted. And now that he allowed it, Kazuaki was much closer to him than before. Much more possessive. Wanting to keep him nearby.

Hitori supposed it was the same sort of poignant love story that people turned to when they wanted to cry, wasn’t it? Melodramatic playbacks of people who wanted to cherish the time they had left together, when it turned out that somebody was suddenly terminal. That was different, though, because they were always really couples. Always the sort of people who would, if not for this oh-so-sad tragedy, be expected to go on to have picket fences and porch furniture. And the illness, it was always something that they could not be blamed for. It could never be said, in those movies, that the dying lover could have brought it on themself.

He did, though. People could blame him all day long, and he could blame himself (but also that man) and he could hate himself for it, but it’s not like self-loathing would do anything but help him anticipate that waiting death. That was another thing, wasn’t it? The dying person never wanted to die. Always wished to live longer than the disease gave them. The dying person was always so good, and nice, and faithful…

Perhaps that was why he and Kazuaki had never officially gotten together. Hitori had known, by the time they might have dated, that something like this could happen. That he could need to, in technicality, cheat on him to keep up on Heartful House’s financial situation. It was all quite the situation, and he couldn’t say that it didn’t bother him to be… like this. No, the problem wasn’t just with him, it was with everything. He had to wonder why everything was like this. Wonder if there was some other way things could have gone, and wonder if there was any chance at all that he could have been happy. That everyone could have been happy.

That was the day he found out the answer. No. There was no chance at all.

As he approached Heartful House on his way home from work, he noticed a car parked outside of it. That was odd, and as soon as he noticed it he quickened his step. He’d been walking at a fairly leisurely pace before, knowing that if he exerted himself too much it would just hurt him more in the long run, but in this case he discarded all of those qualms to get back as quickly as he could. Just in time to see somebody walking out of the house, and towards that car.

He was a large-framed man, vaguely intimidating, with hair that was somewhere between blue and black. There was a sad look to his eyes, which only got worse when he saw Hitori, who had run up to him but then immediately froze up.

“You… so you’re the immune boy who’s been living here, aren’t you?” The man spoke softly then stole a glance back at the house, “I’m very sorry for your loss,” And with that, he’d gone. Left and got into that car, and drove away, leaving Hitori standing there with such a deep pit in his stomach that he thought he might just drop dead right there. He wouldn’t, though. He had to confirm what he dreaded those words meant.

Weakly, forcing himself to move as if he was wearing shoes made of lead, he turned to the house and pushed the door open. He was immediately hit by an awful, horrible smell. It wasn’t the smell of something rotting, no, it was different from that. Metallic, and the way it filled his nose chilled him. This was a smell that he knew, he knew it well. It was the smell that pervaded the basement, it was the same thing he’d smelled that first day when he came home to the news of the mailman’s brutal death.

Blood. And it was strong, the smell. So much of it.

He was seeing red, vision hazy, and he stumbled inside, clutching at his own arms as he forced his eyes to focus, though he immediately wished that he didn’t. Wished that he hadn’t looked and seen what had happened, because he knew without even looking. Seeing it only served to make him gag. He stumbled, trying to just get away, get out of the room, but he tripped. Fell over one of the bodies. One of the corpses.

He took in too much information, more than he wanted to, when he instinctively looked to see what he’d fallen over. It wasn’t only them, but it was all of them. All of the children, except… Nageki was missing. He wasn’t there, wasn’t dead at least, wasn’t dead in the same room as the others; there were adults too, though. Dead adults, and he realized something. The adults had other wounds, certainly, but every single corpse had been shot. Shot right through the head. Whoever had been here knew exactly what they were doing, and he quickly realized that the adult corpses were wearing holsters. Nothing in them, but they were, and he found himself staring at the door, terrified.

Than man he’d seen, this was his fault. It had to be his fault, and he knew who it was, too. The man who Dr Isa Souma had mentioned, the researcher who was studying this very parasite. The only person out there who could possibly have known that Hitori was immune, the only other person who could know that the only way to effectively wound somebody infected was to go for the head. Go for the brain. And everyone who had been bit… was shot too, to avoid spreading the parasite any further…

Ryuuji Kawara.

He remembered that name, and it filled his mind now. Running on repeat and bringing with it a distinct feeling. Hatred. Hitori couldn’t say that he’d ever hated a single person in particular before, or at the very least, not to this extent. He hated humanity. He’d admit that in full confidence now. He hated humanity entirely. He hated every individual person who had hurt him, but not like this. No, he hated them, but this was a different sort of hatred. What he wanted now was… revenge.

He’d killed plenty of people before, but it had always weighed on him. They were the sort of people who really ought to die, and the sort of people who nobody would miss, and he didn’t care about them. Everyone in the world should just die; but he had never before now actually wanted any of those deaths to be at his hands. He had never before today actually wanted to kill somebody. Ryuuji Kawara had broken that threshold.

No, no, Ryuuji hadn’t just broken it, he’d shattered it to pieces.  
Hitori wanted to kill Ryuuji Kawara,  
And he didn’t care who else he’d have to kill to do it.


	9. Chapter 9

Log 00003  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Written Log.

The sample was successfully retrieved. However, I was unable to avoid bringing the guards with me. A very unfortunate fact. As soon as they were inside, the infected children attacked them. It seems they were made aware of the nature of this parasite against my will, because they didn’t hesitate to shoot both the children and the infected among themselves in the head.

I just hope this project is a success. Immortality for humans… I feel like maybe, at this rate, bringing that about would be the only way to redeem myself for all the death I’ve caused in the effort of this research.

But I can’t focus on that! Let’s look at the positives. The new testing wing is completely accident-proof, so there’s no chance of losing this sample, so research as usual can resume! If we can isolate a strain which doesn’t require the host to consume human flesh, then this will be a perfect success!

-  
When Kazuaki got home that evening after his shift at the theater company, he didn’t scream. He didn’t start bawling, or wailing, or make any noise at all. He cried, but he cried silently, and suddenly understood what people meant when they said things like, their heart dropped through the floor, because that was exactly how he felt when he saw those bodies lying on the floor.

It was like somebody had decided to run him over with a train. Not just that, but the train was right here, in the house, far from any train tracks. A painful and terrible shock completely out of left field, and he could hardly even process it as he stared at the scene. It wasn’t frightening to him, no, not the sort of frightening that would make him scream. This scene of death, it was exactly that. It ached of doom, filled him with a strange sort of depression.

These children, these children who Hitori had devoted his life to protecting, who Kazuaki had grown fond of himself in his time at Heartful House, who were just so precious, they were dead now. Dead and gone, and the evidence was right there on the floor. There would be no more smiles from them, never again would any of them tease Hitori and Kazuaki, and they’d never reach a future where they could go outside again without worrying about being killed.

They’d just been killed here instead.

Kazuaki clutched at his shawl, drawing his breaths out as long as he could, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage in front of him. They were dead. He couldn’t see Nageki there, though, or Hitori. Gingerly, he stepped over the bodies to search throughout the rest of the house, finding no signs of struggle in any other part of the building. Hell had only broken loose right in front of the doorway. It took him a while to find Hitori, though, because he was in the attic, where Kazuaki hardly even thought to look until he’d looked everywhere else. Hitori was sitting on a box, staring at the floor of the hardly-used storage room, “Hitori…?”

“Kazuaki…!” His voice was breathy and relieved, his movements stilted as he turned around, stood up, and walked over, holding him dangerously close, “You’re okay, you’re okay… At least you’re…”

“Hitori, I’m so… so sorry…” Kazuaki mumbled, frozen where he stood for a few moments before wrapping his arms around Hitori as well, gripping the back of his scarf tightly.

“It’s… fine…” He muttered, pulling Kazuaki with him as he dropped to the floor, “I have a plan, after all, I have a plan…” He inhaled sharply, then let out a jarring, bitter laugh, “I know who did this… I know who did this to us… He came and he killed them all, and he took Nageki away with him… But we’ll go and get him back…”

“Hitori…?” He questioned, concerned.

“Kazuaki, I was thinking, that maybe… well, would the apocalypse really be such a bad thing anymore? How about you and I, what if we brought about the end of the world?” His voice had turned soft at this, and he buried his face in Kazuaki’s hair, “I love your hair, it’s so soft…”

“Hitori, why don’t you get some sleep? You’re not making sense…” Kazuaki muttered, turning to face him, “We can… we can deal with this tomorrow…”

“There’s nothing to deal with, Kazuaki,” Hitori shook his head, then looked him right in the eyes as he repeated himself, “I told you, I have a plan. A perfect plan. We’re going to destroy this awful world, and we’re going to find Nageki, and I’m going to kill Ryuuji Kawara.”

“D-Destroy the world? But how? Why?” Kazuaki questioned, leaning in even closer and moving his hands to cup Hitori’s cheeks, “Don’t you… Don’t you still care about me…? And Nageki…? Destroying the world would…”

“No, I don’t mean like that, Kazuaki, not at all…” Hitori shook his head, closing whatever gap was left between them to kiss him softly, an action which would be much more thought about in another situation, but at the moment he only continued talking, “Just think, if we were to just… let this parasite spread... wouldn’t it be wonderful? Everyone in this whole awful world would be dead, or else just shambling about aimlessly… After all, without me to tell you to sleep, you never would… you’d be sleep deprived, and barely functional, and unable to do anything of worth…” He shook his head, smirking, in a fearful and broken sort of way, “You and me and Nageki, we’d never get hurt again if the world was to become like that. There’d be nobody out there to hurt us.”

“Hitori, I…” He hesitated, and thought about it for a moment. Maybe it was just the parasite talking to leave him so incredibly devoid of morals, but what Hitori was talking about suddenly didn’t seem wrong at all. What had the rest of the world ever done for him, anyway? He’d been left sad and alone and useless his entire life, until he met Hitori. Until he became useful, became worth something, “I think that… sounds nice.”

“Doesn’t it just?” Hitori whispered, pulling Kazuaki in closer, somehow, and just staying there on the floor. Everything had fallen apart, but at least he still had Kazuaki. Everything had fallen apart, but he was going to fix it soon. Fix it… no, not quite fix it, but he would make this awful world just a little bit better. And he would get his revenge.

It wasn’t so hard to put his plan into action, anyhow. When he finally worked up the nerve to clean up the murder scene by the door, he started working on what he needed to do. He found out, through no easy means, where the research center was that Ryuuji Kawara was working at. It was being kept under wraps given the sensitive nature of the research, and they’d had to decide whether they wanted to keep the research center on the radar or release a research paper, seeing as doing both would definitely lead to protesters at the very least.

Protesters wouldn’t go to the same lengths that Hitori went to to find the research center, of course. He wasn’t even sure how he did it, but he knew that he did, because he had to. They had Nageki, after all. He needed to go there, and he needed to find Nageki, needed to get him out of there and needed to kill Ryuuji. That was the easy part of the plan, of course. The other thing he needed to do was actually get the parasite circulating around. He contemplated throwing a block party, or something of that ilk, knowing just how much the disease permeated his own home, but then he realized that he did not in any way want to deal with a party.

So he’d have to use Kazuaki. Luckily, he did agree with the decision, though when asked he revealed that he wasn’t quite as comfortable with being directly responsible as he was with forsaking mankind. He would do it, though. Hitori would just have to come with him to make sure he didn’t attack anybody, or hurt himself, because he’d had a harder time resisting lately. Hitori figured the effect of his blood must be wearing off, but he couldn’t give him any more now.

That wasn’t such a big deal, though. Soon enough it wouldn’t even matter at all, he’d just have to figure out some way to ensure Kazuaki’s safety for the duration of the time it took to get to the research center, given that Hitori wasn’t willing to wait until the parasite had spread throughout the world, or even the entire country. He didn’t need to anyway. All he really needed to wait for was for the town to fall to pieces, then he could steal a car and be on his way to the research center. There was no such thing as theft at the end of the world, after all. He… had never driven before, but he did know how to, having read the manual plenty of times. It might take a bit of getting used to, but then, he’d have a town in chaos to practice in before actually getting out on the road and just hoping he’d drive well enough to avoid getting pulled over, given that he didn’t have a license. He… would also snatch some narcolepsy medicine from the pharmacy. Falling asleep while driving would definitely not be a good thing.

As for keeping Kazuaki safe, well, it sure wouldn’t be good if he was constantly wandering off at the sight of remaining humans, which he would do. It was obvious when Hitori accompanied him to various places around town spreading the disease that he would do that, as he already would have if not for Hitori keeping an arm around him; and just holding his wrist didn’t work, because he was definitely too much stronger for that to have any function whatsoever.

In fact, con`sidering Kazuaki’s strength, the best bet would probably be to attach him to the car itself. Hitori simply wouldn’t be able to hold onto him very well, if he got it in his head to go after somebody. Not that Hitori was all that adverse to him going after people in itself, but it would be inconvenient to try and make any progress like that, and besides. Hitori could pick the right people to kill to keep Kazuaki fed, he didn’t need to go wandering after random people and possibly getting himself...

...shot.

Hitori would prefer not to think about that, but as soon as he had the thought it pressed up against his skull from the inside of his mind and he couldn’t stop. That was right, wasn’t it? Kazuaki could very easily be seen as the enemy by any humans they saw (Kazuaki was not their enemy, not really. Hitori was.) so not only was it important to keep him nearby, but Hitori would have to make it incredibly obvious that he wouldn’t be a danger to anybody unless they themselves got too close to him.

Clearly the best solution was to chain Kazuaki to the car. Not tie him, no, that wouldn’t make it clear enough, and besides. Kazuaki was smart, he could untie a goddamn rope. A chain, well, Hitori could hold onto the key and it would be made exceedingly clear that Kazuaki was not going to get too far from the car. Speaking of which, it was a Jeep without any doors on it. All that much easier, because then Kazuaki could easily stay attached both in the car and out of it.

Oddly enough, he didn’t seem to be made very uncomfortable by it. Actually, he wasn’t uncomfortable at all. He recognized the necessity, after all, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t move at all. Plus, strange as it was, it made him feel a little less freaked out while Hitori was still working out exactly how to drive the car. It wasn’t like being chained to the vehicle was actually any safer than just wearing a seatbelt, but it somehow did feel that way.

There were checkpoints at every road into and out of the town now. They were neither very useful nor very explained. Everybody inside the town, anybody who could still think, knew exactly why they were there. Nobody outside understood, though, why they were suddenly not allowed inside. Why people sat in those small buildings with bulletproof glass, but ventilation turned up to eleven. After all, Takaba Labs didn’t want word getting out about this outbreak. It had published one paper on the parasite, back when it was well-contained. If the world was to find out that the previously mentioned parasite was suddenly spreading, it wouldn’t be any sort of good thing. In fact, it would be a bad thing.

The checkpoints were too late, though. Infected people had already left the town by the time the parasite became visible enough, though maybe it would keep it from spreading as quickly. Anyone who tried to leave was either going to listen when told not to, or immediately become entranced by the human behind the glass and disregard any previous intentions. Everyone except Hitori, of course, who just blasted right through the checkpoint. He didn’t stop, didn’t even look as he drove the car right through the barricade at the city lines. They wouldn’t send anyone after him, that would cause too much of a scene.

Until it became an international issue, he was sure that Takaba Lab would prefer to keep the crisis under wraps, and he was entirely correct. Along the route he needed to take to the research center was the town which held the hospital he’d been to back then, and while he wasn’t exactly expecting it, he also wasn’t surprised to discover that town had also been sanctioned off. What did surprise him was to what extent the town had been affected; he thought that he’d seen anarchy already, but he obviously hadn’t, because that description much better suited this town. Again, he ignored the checkpoints to get in, but then immediately found himself slowed by the infected who were sluggishly wandering about the streets. As much as he’d stopped caring, he still found himself adverse to the idea of just running them over.

Besides, it wasn’t like they blocked the streets completely. They just slowed him down, like pedestrians crossing incredibly slowly. They ignored the car completely, but of course they would. There was nobody there worth eating, and given that none of them had slept in weeks now, that was all they cared about. Hitori wasn’t sure falling into such a state of sleep deprivation was even possible without dying, for humans that weren’t being puppeteered by a parasite. It probably wasn’t. He had half a mind to recommend a nap to them, but then, it was simpler this way. Incompetent zombies were less likely to get themselves killed, after all, since they were far less intelligent and far less agile, and thus less intimidating. And when they didn’t get themselves killed, they were still wonderfully infective carriers of disease. Bringers of plague.

Basically, they were rats. Hitori was thinking of people, albeit diseased people, but a sort of human nonetheless, as rats. Luckily for them, in this case, rats were his friends. Contrary to any other remaining humans in this town, who would probably kill any and all zombies who got too close to them. Speaking of remaining humans, it seemed they’d gotten some sort of information on how the parasite spread, since they were quarantined not indoors, but on the roofs of tall buildings. Of course at this point in its progression, none of the infected could climb stairs or work an elevator, and staying outdoors kept the air circulating well enough to avoid infection through that method.

He almost didn’t notice them, of course, being so far away, but the smallest bit of movement that was any bit exuberant alerted him to the presence of at least one non-infected person up on top of an apartment building, not that he’d be investigating that. He couldn’t say he cared much about the affairs of any miscellaneous survivors, as long as they didn’t come up with some way to stop the spread of the parasite and ruin Hitori’s plans completely. That would be very rude of them.

Unfortunately, Hitori had not left in the morning, nor was he able to go particularly quickly through the droves of infected here (at least back in his own town they were still smart enough not to wander aimlessly in the street) and he wasn’t about to try and stay up through the night. Staying awake was difficult enough during the day, even with the medicine he’d stolen, so by the time it had gotten dark he’d already made the decision to stop for the night. Besides, he needed to eat something too. Parking the car in the middle of a street, he reached into the backseat and pulled out one of the grocery bags he’d brought along of nonperishables. When it came to feeding Kazuaki every nine days, he’d just have to take people as he found them, because there was no way for him to bring along a freezer. Not that he minded that much anymore. He had no reason not to kill somebody every week, and he’d probably end up doing more than that anyhow.

But that was an issue for later. Kazuaki had eaten that particular dietary requirement just before they left, so for the time being he could subsist on the same diet of chips ahoy and granola bars as Hitori. Though he’d been generally silent while they were driving, not wanting to distract Hitori from the road, he spoke now as he started eating from the package of cookies, “Do you think most of the towns we go through are going to be like this, Hitori?”

“Of course not,” He shook his head, “The only reason it seems like so many is because we spent most of our time on the highway. The parasite really hasn’t even gotten to a majority of the region, let alone the whole country. When it gets to that point, they’ll definitely start putting out news coverage on it. The government can’t cover this up forever, they just don’t want people knowing that their scientists screwed up royally.”

“What exactly are they trying to do, anyway…?” Kazuaki asked carefully, not wanting to make Hitori talk about it more if he didn’t want to.

“Immortality, I think,” He shrugged, “I mean, despite the cannibalism, this parasite does keep people alive. As long as you stay well-fed, you’re going to live forever.”

“I don’t wanna live forever,” Kazuaki shook his head, pulling his knees up to his chest, “Living forever… I’d just be left a-alone again… I’d be all alone…” He squeezed his eyes shut as they filled with tears, “I think I’d rather just… shoot myself…!”

“Kazuaki, shooting yourself would solve a total of zero of your problems,” Hitori responded blankly, putting a hand on his shoulder, then trailing it over to his neck and brushing the metal of the chain, tilting his head to the side and softening his gaze, “Say, is this comfortable enough for you…?” Clearly, he wanted to get off of that topic, and this was the perfect way out.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Kazuaki nodded, then glanced away sheepishly, “Pretty sure it got me some weird looks while we were on the highway, though…”

“Well, yeah,” Hitori shrugged a bit, moving that same hand down to hold onto Kazuaki’s hand, just gently, “Generally you don’t see things like that every day, and I can’t imagine any explanation that people could think of cast you in a very savory light. But the truth was just that if you weren’t on this chain, you’d probably eat them. So really, it’s an all /too/ savory light,” He chuckled at his own bad joke.

“They’ll understand someday…” Kazauki sighed, turning to look up at the sky, “Someday, when the whole world is just like this town… horrifying as it is, I still think it’s kind of peaceful…”

“So do I,” Hitori nodded, “Almost like this is how it all was meant to be. Humanity’s been holding on for way too long, some sort of doom… was really overdue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just think about the dinosaurs. To think that we’ve been around all this time without some sort of mass extinction is just ridiculous,” Hitori chuckled, putting the bag back in the back before leaning against the back of his seat, on his side, “So that’s why it seems peaceful, even though the world is ending. It’s humanity’s natural state, to fall apart like this. You just have the unique opportunity to watch it unfold, and know its nature, and have no reason to be afraid.”

“There’s a lot of people out there who don’t understand what’s happening, aren’t there?” Kazuaki asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Hitori nodded, “But even if they did know, even if they understood every nuance to this parasite and the world it’s in, I’m not sure if they would be as accepting of it as you are. As okay with it as you are. Kazuaki, you’ve always been emotionally delicate, but at the same time… there’s something very, unique,” He reached out and trailed a finger along Kazuaki’s jaw, “About you and your emotions. This world was never kind to you, so of course it wouldn’t bother you if it ended. You have nobody to worry about losing, anymore, isn’t that right…?” Kazuaki just nodded slightly at Hitori’s words, “Everyone else is all tied up, fearing for the lives of the people they love, fearing for the fate of the world… because everybody wants to save the world. Not you, though. Not us. We’re…” He chuckled a bit, stopping his finger at Kazuaki’s chin, “We’re like two out of four horsemen. I’m death, and you’re plague, all we need now is famine and war… When everyone else wants to save the world, we’re here to destroy it…”

“Hitori,” Kazuaki started softly, grabbing his hand, “If this hadn’t happened… if everyone, had just stayed human, not sick, not dead… What do you think you would have done, with your life?”

“I don’t know,” He shrugged, “I can’t imagine I would ever feel much differently than I do now. I never cared much about humanity to begin with, I think…” He trailed off, then frowned, “Well, I probably would have become a teacher. A math teacher, I guess, just until I was sure they’d be all right. Till they could all manage themselves and I was certain of it, till there was nothing left I had to do. Then I’d die. I’d leave this awful world. Go somewhere I could be alone, forever.”

“Would you really want to be… completely alone…?” Kazuaki asked quietly, stretching out his other hand to stroke Hitori’s face.

“No, I… can’t say I would…” He muttered, “I just wouldn’t want to ever see any of those people I never cared about. Anybody who was a part of this terrible world.”

“But I’m not really, am I?” Kazuaki asked, “I’m not part of the world. You care about me,” He knew just from looking at Hitori that this was the truth, “So I think I would go with you. I think I… will go with you. When you die.”

“I don’t think you will,” Hitori shook his head, “I don’t doubt that you would, after all. Dying with somebody… sure sounds much less frightening than dying all by oneself. But I don’t think that you will, when it comes down to it…” He looked away with a sigh, “Somebody like me, I could only ever die alone.” 

“No, I don’t think that’s true, Hitori…” Kazuaki whispered, then smiled a bit, “What if I made you a promise? You said it yourself, dying alone… would be something scary, and I don’t want that for you. I don’t want… to be without you, either. So I will go with you. I promise.”

“That’s a funny thing to promise with a smile on your face.”

“Well, there’s a lot of funny things you’ve said with a smile. Like… let’s start the apocalypse. So it’s not that weird…” He defended himself lightly, knowing that Hitori was joking (for once) and thus not being upset by it.

“I guess you’re right,” Hitori nodded, sighed, then closed his eyes, drifting off near-immediately after. Kazuaki chuckled softly, watching him. Hitori had discovered a long time back that falling asleep around Kazuaki worked well enough as an indicator that he should sleep too, so he didn’t have to worry about dozing off prior to telling him to do the same. Kazuaki only stayed awake for a little while longer before going to sleep himself, taking the cue easily enough.

Now, when a zombie slept, it was an incredibly certain thing. Waking one up was not possible until they were entirely rested, seeing as it was an incredibly manual process to fall asleep in the first place. It was like a machine, that wouldn’t power on until it was entirely charged up. Humans, on the other hand, were definitely prone to waking up, and while Hitori may not have been quite as easy to awaken as some humans, it was still an entirely plausible happenstance, particularly when there were sounds of a certain sharpness and volume. A bullet hitting the side of a car, for example, was a paradigm of such things.

Hence why Hitori was awoken with ease by the sound. Well, awoken was a bit too strong of a word. Rather, he sat up, half asleep, flipped the bird in the generally direction of wherever the shot had come from, and went back to sleep. Perhaps not the most intelligent decision, but tired brains rarely made those. In any case, nothing further seemed to come of it at the time, so it wasn’t all that much of a problem. However, upon waking up, he still resolved to discover the source of that shot in the middle of the night. He could leave survivors be, up until they started threatening his own survival, and that of Kazuaki. They couldn’t die now, not until they found Nageki.

Kazuaki hadn’t yet woken up, by the time Hitori was awake enough to make this decision, which was for the better anyhow. He’d be plenty safe here, especially sleeping, and even more especially while Hitori was confronting whoever had fired at the car in the night. He did leave a note on the dashboard, however. It would be no good for Kazuaki to freak out over Hitori’s lack of presence and do something rash. No, no, Kazuaki’s actions couldn’t be particularly well-described as rash. Mostly they were just… mistakes. Many, many mistakes, none of them notably rash, just… mistakes, with no additional adjectives.

Note in place, Hitori made his way over to the building on which he’d seen movement the night before; an old apartment building, a tall one that was surrounded similarly by a few others. An ideal location to set up shelter, actually, what with the airflow and the incapability of zombies to get up there, although he couldn’t see any sort of makeshift bridges between the buildings, so clearly they weren’t utilizing them to their full potential. That meant that hopefully, if worst came to worst and push came to shove, he could outsmart whoever was up there.

The interior of the building, excluding the first floor where there were a few of the infected wandering around and completely ignoring him as he walked right past them, was empty. The elevator wasn’t working, but he didn’t expect that it would be. Of course the building wouldn’t continue receiving power with most of the town’s population in… shambles. Most of the power lines had ended up being downed, and nobody was there to fix them. Although, now that he thought about it, as long as the power plant itself hadn’t had its employees infected, there would be no reason for the power to be cut off, and there hadn’t actually been any storms recently.

He briefly stepped back outside and walked over to one of the fallen lines, though he kept a safe distance and watched his step all the while. They could easily still be live, though he couldn’t think of any way to test it; examining it, however, revealed that there were still a few lines up, seemingly those that would feed household electrical outlets rather than the building’s systems. And the ones that were down, looked much less like they were knocked down, and more like… they had somehow been cut. Was one of the survivors a clever electrician?

This put him on edge, and when he returned to the building, he kept his guard up while going up the stares. An intelligent decision, too, because as soon as he opened the door out onto the roof he heard a gunshot, and ducked. Fast, so very quickly. Reflexes, toned by years of playing the bait for his own killings; without them, well, he couldn’t imagine he’d still be standing. It all went far too quickly for him to comprehend it in full, but he did know that when he opened his eyes again there was somebody standing there with a gun pointed right at where his head had just been. Somebody… small.

“Wha-” A voice from somewhere out of Hitori’s vision sounded shocked, then annoyed as she continued, “AngHEL!! This again!? Stop wasting ammo!”

“Edel Blau!!” The person who had shot at Hitori sounded vaguely panicked as he scrambled for the trigger again, clearly impacted by the gun’s recoil. He wasn’t /just/ short, he was also… young. Probably too young to be using a gun at all, “I waste not any of our disposal! Foul necromancy’s children bring Hell upon us! This is the one who walks among the undead, come to drag us down to the same depths as those rotten monstrosities!”

“...Listen,” Hitori said simply, holding his hands out in front of himself, “My name’s Hitori Uzune. I don’t want to hurt you. I just was woken up in the middle of the night by somebody shooting my car, so I decided that I should investigate,” He then reached down to his own side, grabbing another thing he had stolen, “But… if you keep pointing that thing at me, I’ll have you know that I’m a much better shot than you. It would really be a shame if you lost that trigger finger of yours, wouldn’t it? Not that I’d kill a kid like you, but when it comes to minor injuries…”

“Hey now! Losing a finger is not a minor injury!” The owner of the other voice walked into view, a girl at the same young age as the boy who was pointing a gun at him. Both were actually dressed fairly normally, wearing middle school uniforms with the name of the town, “Stop being rude to each other, both of you!”

“What…?” Hitori shook his head with a soft chuckle, “It’s minor enough if it’s treated immediately. Which I would do,” He sighed, “I’m not completely heartless, after all, and you seem like… good kids. I’d hate for anything really bad to happen to you, honestly,” He frowned, eyes seeming blank and glassy as he continued, “But I do have important business to attend to, so if you continue to threaten my life, I won’t hesitate.”

“Anghel, stop with the gun,” The girl said to him, and he reluctantly lowered it as she turned to Hitori, “So Anghel really was telling the truth when he said he saw somebody sleeping among the zombies… I just thought that he was mistaking a dead body for a living person,” She stepped closer, rubbing her chin as she looked up at Hitori’s face, “But I guess he was right to try and warn you. Well, till it got obvious they were ignoring you. That’s what he said, anyway,” She scrunched up her face, “You’re a… funny guy… Uzune…”

“So it was him,” Hitori muttered, shaking his head, “I can’t believe I flipped off a middle-schooler,” This was mostly to himself before he turned his attention to the small girl before him, “I guess it is pretty suspicious of me, to survive among them as easily as I do,” He turned his head, coughing into his hand, then walking over to the edge of the roof and shaking the resulting sludge off over the edge, “The truth is, my body’s incompatible with the disease causing… all this. So the infected ignore me. I carry the disease, but it’s too intent on hurting me to actually care about spreading, so I can’t get you sick. Though I wouldn’t recommend touching any of that… sludge, you just saw me dispose of.”

“Incompatible with the parasite?” One more voice added in, and Hitori looked to see yet another child sitting on the ground, folding laundry. It was altogether quite a nice roof they’d set up, actually. They had extension cords going down the stairs and into various apartments, with power strips on the ends of them for various electronics, which were all situated in one corner with tarps arranged in such a way that if it rained, they could easily close off a fourth side and keep the items completely dry. Food and tents were arranged much less carefully around the remainder of the roof.

“How did you… I never mentioned it was a parasite, and there’s been no news coverage,” Hitori questioned, staring at the third child, “For that matter, how did you know to set up camp on a roof like this? And how are you surviving so well? You’re all just middle schoolers…”

“Well there used to be some adults, but they left because they didn’t trust Ryouta… then they got eaten,” The girl (Edel Blau?) shrugged as she explained, “And we’re tough kids! Isn’t that right, Ryouta?”

“Yeah,” Ryouta nodded as he finished folding a shirt, “We can handle ourselves…” He seemed a little bit less determined than Hiyoko was, but continued nonetheless, “I uh, knew it was a parasite, and how to avoid it, because… my dad texted me about it. I don’t know how he knew, but a long time ago he said that every night me and my mom should prick our fingers, and if either of our blood looked darker than normal, the other should… run and set up shelter on the roof,” He dropped the article he was holding, dropping his hands into his lap sadly, “My mom was working at the hospital where it all started, and she…” He sighed, “Well, she’s gone now, anyway. I can’t dwell on that. Everyone around here’s lost somebody.”

“Mm,” Hitori nodded slightly, finding himself entirely unsympathetic to this story. No, that wasn’t quite what he meant. He’d lost somebody too. Too many somebodies, but he felt nothing for this child’s losses. It was just as he’d said; he wasn’t entirely heartless, but what was left of his heart was certainly an inky shade, “So tell me, Ryouta, what’s your last name, if your father knew all of this?”

“It’s… Kawara,” Ryouta’s expression turned from upset to confused immediately, “Why? Do you know my d-”

“I thought as much,” Hitori cut him off, voice now completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever as he went ahead and actually pulled out his gun now, immediately leaning down and pressing it against Ryouta’s jaw, looking him right in the eyes, “And since he told you this, how to survive, he most certainly… cares about you… and cell towers aren’t out just yet, so I’d say that,” He turned off the safety, “I could find his number in your phone, and let him know that his… oh-so precious child… was tragically killed…”

“H-Hey!!” The girl shouted, sounding freaked out as she watched this scene, the atmosphere immediately shifted to one of an incredibly high tension, “Let Ryouta go, or I’ll shoot you!!” She shouted as she snatched the gun from the scene kid. It seemed that was the only weapon they had between the three of them.

“Oh, really?” His tone was deep and quiet, breathing only when he spoke, “Go on and try, I dare you. Fire one shot, and this Kawara… is dead. It’s not like I’m alone. Kill me, and he’ll realize. Somebody who… for some reason, cares about me, he’ll realize I’m dead, and he’ll go and finish my business for me.”

“Hiyoko, he…” Ryouta squeaked out, “He sounds really serious…”

“Why!?” Hiyoko, as it seemed her name was, sounded desperate. The other child, the uninvolved one, was just standing there in shock while she cried, “Why do you want to hurt Ryouta!?”

“Because I want Ryuuji Kawara to experience the same pain he put me through…” Hitori growled, but his hand was shaking, and his resolve had wavered suddenly in such an amount that he dropped the gun and took a step backwards, pressing the palm of his hand against his face.

“What do you mean…? What did my dad ever do to you…?” Ryouta asked, panting as he picked up the gun Hitori had dropped, just to be on the safe side.

“I could… take away his child, just like he took away mine…” Hitori’s words came in bursts as he held his hands against his own neck, holding tight onto the scarf he wore, “All of my siblings, at the orphanage, he killed… all but one of them, and he kidnapped him, the one he didn’t kill… He took them all away from me…” He took a deep breath, “He deserves to suffer, but,” He shook his head, “You don’t. I can just get my revenge, the way I planned originally,” He coughed once, then laughed, “Sorry for the trouble, I’ll be going now.”

And he left. He didn’t bother taking his gun back, since he could go other places than that one apartment building for resources. He could easily just steal another, let the small children have that one pistol. They had enough food, and a good setup, so Hitori was actually kind of rooting for them as a unit. For anyone to survive the apocalypse, such spirited kids were certainly not the worst choice. Even if one of them was the child of his worst enemy; but he would not stoop to that level. Purposefully triggering an apocalyptic plague on the earth was one thing, but killing a child in cold blood was another entirely.

That wasn’t to say he thought that somehow, in all the casualties at the end of the world, children would be excluded. He knew full well that wasn’t the case, and it wasn’t quite because they were children that he wanted them to be spared, either. In his opinion, children did not carry with them a level of innocence. Anybody at any age had the capacity to witness or be a victim of the world’s horrors. Every child he’d been close to had, after all, been one or both of the above. He was both. Certainly both.

How tragic.

No, it was particular children that he would want to survive. If he met a child who behaved in a horrible manner, he’d flinch no less at their death than he would at that of an adult. Children he’d never met ellicited the same lack of response to their infected forms or dead bodies as any other. The children he’d just met, they were bright. They were shining beacons of hope in a world that was descending into ruin, they were a particular type of person; the type he could trust with the end of the world. The type of people who deserved to be there when the dust settled, and only the strongest were left with the world now all their own.

There would still be terrible people, in the end. There would be plenty of survivors who didn’t deserve it, but then, it wasn’t like Hitori could do anything about that. He wouldn’t even be around, in the end. When all the survivors left just did too well, and every infected body starved to death, because that was what would happen, when they stopped being able to get at the few remaining humans on the planet. That would be quite some time away, however, and he wouldn’t make it through that time. There would be survivors who shouldn’t inherit the world. That new world, at the end of the world; But Hitori could hope for the best anyway. One strange sort of optimism in the times when the death of such an ideal was spreading far beyond its birthplace.

This parasite, and the death of optimism both… they travelled in tandem from the very same starting point. Heartful House. And it was by Hitori’s hand that it did such, but he still didn’t feel remorse. Remorse, after all, was for people with full hearts instead of scraps, hearts that were red instead of black.


	10. Chapter 10

Log 00004  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Written Log.

Ever since Isa came on board, he’s been sending in such incredibly detailed reports that the people upstairs forgot to remind me that I should still be making logs. Apparently, though, the purpose of the logs has changed. They won’t tell me why, but I’m supposed to put more of my actual feelings and opinions than the actual results of the research.

I may as well be completely honest; I do not need the government at this point. They know this, too. The only reason we still work together is because they want to work closely enough to the project to cover it up as it continues to spread around the outside world. They know that if they cause too many more problems for us here at Takaba Labs, where I would have hesitated in the past to make them pay, Isa Souma will most definitely not.

He’s a very nice man, though. He just doesn’t like letting people know, and he has a bit of a skewed moral sense that I can’t even begin to judge. Once there was a time when I tried to do everything with warmth, and kindness. After all, you can’t spell ‘science’ without the letters of nice rearranged! But… then again, you can’t spell progress without the letters of gross rearranged. Gross, that’s exactly what we’re doing here in all senses of the word. The impact the parasite has on its hosts is gross, the fact that we’re doing this to people is gross, and what it does to the incompatible with compromised immune systems is particularly gross. Nobody likes the idea of coughing up black sludge.

The sample subject is extremely cooperative. He doesn’t struggle against us when we take blood or anything. It’s unnerving. He did see them die. Those children… they must have been something like family to him, and he had to witness all of their deaths. Right in front of him. Maybe he’s still in shock. That reminds me, I wonder how that incompatible boy is doing? 

-  
Log 00005  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Written Log.

Isa tells me that the incompatible boy from the Heartful House incident could be dead by now, depending on what he did after the outbreaks began. The intelligent thing to do would have been to steal the drug cocktail he’d need from a pharmacy, of course, but he may not have thought to do that. Or… wanted to do that. In addition, regardless of how the immune disease progresses, it’s unclear if a weaker immune system would speed the impact of the parasite on his body.

Isa says that if the parasite continued working at the same pace despite the increasing severity of the immune disease, that boy probably had a year to live following the hospital visit. It hasn’t been a year yet, no, it hasn’t even been half of a year. The outbreaks are spreading further at a rapid pace. In the past week, the number of towns requiring entry and exit checkpoints has increased from two to seven, and yet the government continues to cover it up.

They told me to work on a cure.

I’ll do my best, but…

I no longer believe that anything is possible. Some things just can’t be done.

-  
Log 00014  
Project: Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study  
Head Researcher: Ryuuji Kawara.  
Log form: Video Log.  
“Hello.”

Ryuuji Kawara’s face was stoic, hands folded over each other as he looked straight into the camera.

“My name is Ryuuji Kawara. Head researcher on the Homo Sapien Symbiotic Relationship Study, also known as the Immortality Project. Correction, only researcher. I am the only one left. I’m the only one alive now,” He hesitated, starting to frown, looking away, but then returned to his previous appearance.

“I have burned all of my previous log entries, excluding the ones which have already been archived. The first five, I believe. Everything else since then… I don’t want anybody to see those. I was not in a very good emotional state when I made any of those entries. I discovered that my logs were going to be used to psychoanalyze the effects of my research on my mind and conscience. All anybody needs to know about the effects of my research are the results. The impact it had on me is completely unimportant.”

“So here are the facts, devoid of any opinions whatsoever. The project started out as a simple study of symbiotic relationships, trying to discover options to improve human lives by means of another organism. We first discovered the prime organism for this in a series of tests, launching off of a research project several years back to cause mutations of advantage while in the womb, finding a sample harboring a strange parasite that seemed to do nothing at all to its host. This early form of the parasite was not contagious through the air, and it seems when it naturally mutates, it has no effect on the host whatsoever.”

“This first sample was perfectly useful to us, because it allowed us to examine the early form of the parasite to try and determine what made it abstain from being airborne in that host, but behave differently in terms of contagion when attached to another. Perhaps it was self-preservation. In any case, the parasite was nearly perfect, except for one small detail. It… caused the hosts to crave, no, that’s not right… to require human flesh, as a matter of consumption. It seems that it can tell when others are infected, as it ignores those, as well as people who could be considered immune. The parasite’s method of feeding also contributes to its own spread.”

“The… initial sample subject, as well as everybody else who was infected within our lab for testing purposes, perished in an unfortunately complete manner. The entire testing wing was blown to smithereens. It’s still unclear how this happened, but the engineer who was brought in to…” He trailed off slightly, bringing a hand up to hide his mouth briefly as he squeezed his eyes shut, regaining his composure before continuing, “The late Tohri Nishikikouji, the brilliant engineer who made such a tragedy’s reoccurence impossible, theorized based on the ruins that it may have been the initial subject themself who triggered the explosion.”

“In the… effort of obtaining a new sample from somewhere in the world, with all known infected now… ashes, the wonderful and… also deceased Dr. Isa Souma,” He hesitated again, once more hiding his face until it was stoney again, “Was brought onboard after discovering instances of the parasite not entirely dissimilar to that of the original sample. The only difference was a capacity for airborne transmission, but the subject was just as uneffected by the parasite. While retrieving this sample, government soldiers were dispatched alongside me in the case of a violent encounter. Well, it certainly was a violent encounter, but that was only because they were with me. I never thought in all my days that research would lead me to see so much death in one place… my heart truly does go out to… but that’s unimportant right now. Facts only.”

“After retrieving the sample, research only went well for a short period of time, while outbreaks were occurring throughout the country of the parasite, which were covered up by the government entirely. At this point, there is an entire region of Japan which is sanctioned off due to high concentrations of this parasite, which has been referred to now as a ‘Necroworm’ despite not being a worm at all. This parasite has legs. Worms do not have legs. There is talk about a militant approach of destroying the entire region, but that won’t come to anything.”

“It is only talk. Everybody is aware now, that there is nothing that can be done. The rest of the country is catching on that something is wrong, and the survivors’ posts on social media are no longer going ignored as conspiracy theory or metaphor. This cannot stay covered up forever, and the government already knows what the whole world soon will. The project that was meant to bring immortality to humanity, will instead destroy it completely.”

“Prior to their deaths, my research team and I created the closest thing to a cure that exists. Using our data from the original sample, we were able to create a medicine which stops the disease from being spread through the air. However, it is only in small quantities, and is therefore not fit for distribution. Besides, most infected are already too far gone to agree to take it,” He shook his head, “As for the death of my team, that wasn’t all too simultaneous. I still had Isa Souma, though he is now dead as well. I will not say under what circumstances. The current sample subject managed, somehow, to escape his testing room, though I know he is still somwhere inside that wing. Isa happened to be in there the most, and thus got infected before anybody else. By that measure, then, he ate them all.”

“Following that incident, I realized that there truly is no hope for humanity. At this rate, actually, there is no hope for the human species in any form. Once all of the humans have been infected, they’ll have nothing to eat. That is, that’s what I thought, before I shifted my research focus. I’ve successfully created a suitable substitute. Not-quite-human flesh, by which I don’t mean animal flesh, but rather… I simply dug up some old research on cloning technology. All I needed to do was pull in one more regular human, and I’m now keeping a number of braindead copies of him in a well-ventilated room. They won’t become infected, and I can make as many as I need. The cloning technology was entirely incomplete, of course, but I don’t need functioning humans to feed the masses. All I ever needed was human bodies. I’ve tested this with Isa, and the clones work just the way I intended.”

“I will leave the cloning research behind along with this log. I hope that, even if I die, the world can continue on without me. Oh, that reminds me. Isa was fully functional. When commanded to take a nap, it seems that the infected will sleep until they are at regular cognitive capacity again. That’s right. I suppose, as long as these clones continue being produced and given to the infected, this is only the end of humanity. Not the end of the world. Why, I’d say this research project was a,” He gave a crooked smile, but his eyes were watering, “A critical success. I’m quite triumphant. I discovered immortality after all. It just took… all of those deaths. The original subjects, my research team, Tohri Nishikikouji, Isa Souma… my wife, those children, everyone else who has been and will be killed as the world falls…”

He shook his head with a heavy sigh, and in his silence, a knock sounded. He looked up, gave one last look of defeat to the camera, then shut off the recording.

-  
“Hello?” Ryuuji asked as he opened the door to the research center. He was the only one here now, so he kept it on general lockdown. He didn’t want the subject going outside, wherever he was in the building, but he’d still open a door when asked. He was still a polite man. Despite all that had happened, he was still just Ryuuji Kawara. Defeated and downtrodden, but he was still himself, somehow.

“Hello.” His words were echoed back to him in a monotone.

“You’re the… immune boy, aren’t you?” Ryuuji asked softly, weakly.

“You can call me incompatible. I know there’s no such thing as immunity to this parasite. If anything, call me the immune deficient boy. That’s why the parasite’s gonna kill me, after all,” He paused, staring right through Ryuuji with dark eyes that seemed to burn with an emotion that the scientist had never before encountered, “Oh, wait, no. Don’t call me any of those things. I have a name, because I’m a real person. At least, I think I am. It’s Hitori. Hitori Uzune. You recognized me, Dr Ryuuji Kawara. So you know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid that I do,” Ryuuji shook his head, giving a weak smile, “Well then, why don’t the both of you come inside for a cup of tea, first? Who’s your friend, Uzune?”

“Oh, you can call me Hitori. Don’t distance yourself from me, Ryuuji,” Hitori chuckled, stepping inside and pulling the generally silent Kazuaki along with him by the hand, “This is Kazuaki Nanaki. He’s… my boyfriend. He won’t be having any tea.”

“I see,” Ryuuji nodded, still smiling softly, “You’re quite the polite boy, accepting to have tea with me even knowing that I might poison you.”

“I always try to be polite, sir,” He enunciated the word in such a way that a term of respect would turn mocking, “You took away my reason to go on living, so as long as I have Kazuaki here to finish you off if I meet an untimely demise… I fear nothing,” Kazuaki just nodded slightly at Hitori’s words, staying quiet. These were the final moments, after all, he was only there as a second. He was willing to do it, too. Hatred was an infectious thing, and he too had been hurt by Ryuuji’s actions.

“Well, then…” Ryuuji looked down at the floor, “I was only being polite myself, but I can only imagine… you would like to kill me as soon as possible.”

“Tell me why I should.”

“What…?”

“Tell me why I should kill you,” It wasn’t any sort of mercy, and Ryuuji realized this when he looked at Hitori’s face. His eyes were wild, and there was a sort of smirk across his face that revealed he hadn’t the slightest intention of letting Ryuuji survive this encounter. No, the question was rather… he wanted to be sure that his victim understood exactly why he deserved to die.

“You should kill me because it’s my fault that your family is dead,” Ryuuji answered simply, slowing getting down onto his knees on the tiled floor, “You should kill me because I took your only remaining family, after that, away from you. To here. You should kill me because I ruined your life,” He sighed softly, “But you should listen to me, because we’re on the same side now. The side of the infected. There’s research on how to create clones, to feed them out there. Please, believe me when I tell you this. You can keep the world going… just like this.”

“...I’m not on anybody’s side.”

“What do you…”

“For all I care, everybody out there can just die,” There was a distinct malevolence in his words as he said this, and the first sign of fear appeared on Ryuuji’s face. Not just fear, but absolute terror, and the defeat he’d shown before was now absolute with the information that even his desire to continue the lives of the infected was a failure. That was what Hitori had been looking for. The one thing he wanted to see out of Ryuuji Kawara before he killed him.

The blood which pooled around his body was a bright red color. Much more red than any of the blood from that day, back then. It was just the same as anyone Hitori had killed along the way to feed Kazuaki, coming here, but it looked much more intense now. Maybe it was the lights of the research center, or perhaps it was only because of who it was that now lay dead. The enemy.

Hitori felt invigorated, in this revenge, but aside from that he hardly felt anything at all. He certainly didn’t have any negative emotions towards having killed Ryuuji like this, that much was absolutely certain. He stood over the body, taking deep breaths. He’d done it after all, he’d accomplished exactly what he’d intended to do in coming to Takaba labs. It was fulfilling, really, he felt fulfilled and accomplished. Not the least bit regretful. Not the least bit guilty.

“Hitori?” Someone spoke, and the voice was all too familiar. It had been a long time now, since he’d heard it, but even if it had been years he’d recognize that voice. He turned around to look, just to confirm what he thought.

“Nageki,” He breathed, staring in shock, and the twisted grin he’d had only moments ago melted into a genuine smile as he rushed forward, wrapping his arms around his one surviving younger brother, “Nageki, Nageki, Nageki, Nageki…”

“Yeah, that’s… my name…” Nageki mumbled, standing there. Hitori moved away, but still held onto Nageki’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m so glad that you’re alive, and you seem to be okay, are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, right?”

“Hm, no,” Nageki shook his head, “Not physically anyway.”

“Did they say anything mean…?” Hitori asked, only seeming more worried by Nageki’s additional words.

“No, not that either. I just… feel bad, that it’s my fault the research team is all dead. It’s… my fault all of this happened,” He shook his head, crossing his arms and staring at the ground, “I was never immune after all. I was… patient zero.”

“H-Hold on a minute…” Kazuaki finally spoke, stammering as he sat down as Ryuuji’s desk, doing… something, on the computer. He wasn’t crying, strangely enough, and the other two just watched him until he lit up, turning the screen to face them, “Nageki, it w-wasn’t your fault at all…”

Nageki stepped forward, squinting at the screen to read the research reports that Kazuaki had pulled up, “So this parasite, it’s… manmade…?”

“Seems so,” Kazuaki nodded, leaning forward on the desk, “I w-was wondering if I might be able to get into the computer and look at the research papers… because th-this disease just seemed too… too strange to have developed on its own…”

“How did you get into the computer? I’ve tried before, when he’s been sleeping, but I couldn’t figure out the pass-” Nageki thought out loud, but was cut off by Hitori.

“It’s Ryouta, isn’t it?” 

“Ryouta? Why would it be Ryouta?” Nageki asked, confused.

“Because, that’s the name of his kid…” Kazuaki responded softly. Hitori had told him most of the details about that visit to the roof, though he’d left out the bit about nearly shooting Ryouta in the face. Kazuaki could fill in the blanks himself, though. It was… unfortunate, that they’d now left Ryouta an orphan, but more fortunate that Hitori had left the young Kawara alive in the first place.

“I see,” Nageki nodded, “Still alive, right? Hitori, you’re… different now, but I still don’t think you could ever handle killing a child directly. You were always trying to protect… all of us.”

“You’re right,” Hitori sighed, clenching his fists, “I wanted to hurt him just like he hurt us, Nageki, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shoot somebody in middle school, who never even did anything to me or anyone I care about.”

“That’s good,” Nageki gave him a soft smile, touching his arm, “It proves that… Hitori Uzune isn’t completely gone,” He paused, then looked away, suddenly speaking very quietly, “Do you… want to know why none of the other subjects are still alive?”

“Yeah. I can understand the researchers being dead, but… you and Ryuuji were the only living things left in this building by the time I got here, right?” Hitori asked.

“Well, there’s that plant,” Nageki pointed over to a houseplant in a corner, “Otherwise, yeah. It’s… because the parasite is in the brain, people started acting differently, even when they had all the sleep they could need and Ryuuji was the only person in the room. The researchers got scared and decided to kill them, because zombies are one thing, but intelligent zombies with malevolent thoughts…” He shook his head, “Apparently it has something to do with the frontal lobe. Injuring the part of the brain which controls inhibitions and fears can… mess up people’s morals, I guess,” Nageki frowned, staring at the both of them, “I can see it in both of you… Kazuaki’s not even phased by the fact that you just killed someone, Hitori.”

“That’s right, the first time…” Hitori sighed, “The first time he saw me even just kidnapping somebody, he was really freaking out. Watching me shoot someone would have bothered him on some level, but,” He turned to Kazuaki, “You… really don’t care, do you?”

“I… don’t. I know that I should, but really I’m just happy that we found Nageki,” Kazuaki shrugged sheepishly, taking a glance over at the body on the ground, “That… that corpse, I… don’t feel anything about it. I s-still cry over silly things, but this is just… empty. If you pinched me I’d start bawling, but I just don’t… feel a thing about… this…” 

“...Hitori,” Nageki spoke again, this time his voice hardly more than a whisper, “You’re… still dying, aren’t you? Before another year passes, I’ll be the only Heartful House orphan left…” Hitori just nodded slightly as Nageki said this, “Would you… mind doing something for me, before that happens? Two things, really.”

“Anything.”

“I want Kazuaki to stay here with me, after you die. I know I can’t go outside now… no, I could, but I can’t say that I want to. The outside world… I don’t want to have to face it and see what I’ve done to everybody’s lives. How many hopes and dreams I’ve destroyed through this sickness. But I’d be lonely, in here all by myself. So I’d like it if Kazuaki could stay. He’s passive enough not to mind that, right?” 

“I…” Kazuaki frowned, looked away, then sniffed, “Normally I wouldn’t mind at all, Nageki, but I promised Hitori that I… wouldn’t let him die alone…”

“But I knew even before you promised, that you would,” Hitori said simply, “I don’t deserve promises like that. I’d… prefer it, if you stayed with Nageki. We can meet again someday, after all. When you die, later. Much later. You heard what Ryuuji said about the clones, being able to feed on those should give you a nice long life. It’ll… work out for you, here. You’ll like it, I think.”

“Hitori…” Kazuaki frowned, standing up and going to hold onto his arm.

“Really, it’ll be fine,” Hitori shook his head, turning back to Nageki, “And, the other thing?”

“This lab has clearance to make worldwide broadcasts if it needs to. Apparently this research center has always been used for important things throughout time…” Nageki explained, “I learned a lot from snooping around after I got out of the testing wing. I’d… I think you should go on the air and tell people what’s going on. You’re older than me, and you look… like a serious person, I guess. I don’t care what else you say to them, but I do want it out there. I want the world to know that it’s… ending. End the coverup, is what I’m trying to say here.”

“I can do that,” Hitori nodded, “I can absolutely do that.”


	11. Chapter 11

The day that Isa Souma died wasn’t a particularly special day. There was really nothing to it that was different from any other day in the past. Ryuuji had woken up, and got to work on sample analysis, and waiting for Isa to wake up. He didn’t bother keeping Isa in a testing room; there was nobody left to protect from the parasite anymore, and Isa was just as functional as any human.

Once he was awake, he’d approach Ryuuji, ready for a day of testing. He was by far the most cooperative subject Ryuuji had ever had, coming up with all sorts of ideas to determine more about the nature and effects of the parasite on the human body and behavior. It was almost strange, just how much more involved Isa became in the aftermath of his own infection.

“Good morning, Isa!” Ryuuji greeted him brightly that morning, just like any other morning. Ignoring how many people were dead and facing the day with optimism, because he always tried to see the best in any situation. That morning was just the same as all the others, right up until Isa spoke in response to Ryuuji’s next question, “Ready to get to work?”

“No,” He replied simply as he sat down on Ryuuji’s desk, a habit he’d picked up ever since the research project had become such a casual affair.

“What…? You’re usually so eager, is something wrong?” Ryuuji asked, furrowing his brow and putting a hand out to Isa’s shoulder.

“No, nothing’s wrong, I’ve merely come to the conclusion that you’ve nothing left to gather from me. We’ve discovered everything we possibly could. I’m no longer of any use to you,” Isa explained, face just as expressionless as always, “So the only thing for you to do now is kill me.”

“What!?” Ryuuji’s confusion increased, and he pushed his rolling chair back with enough force to hit the far wall.

“Oh, don’t be like that, sir… Between the explosion before and the researchers’ burning of those bodies after killing them, this is your only shot to examine the post-mortem effects of the parasite,” He spoke as calmly as if this was an experiment on a series of food mold, “It’s the least I can do for you, after I ruined your research like that.”

“So that’s why you’ve been doing all of this?” Ryuuji asked, approaching again, though he left his chair behind.

“Mm,” Isa nodded slightly, “It wasn’t that I felt, or feel bad about the deaths of the rest of the research team. You should know that, though. You saw what this thing does to brains. But I do feel bad about the impact their deaths had on your research. You’re brilliant, and wonderful, when it comes to science, and for me to be the one to give you setbacks… is a disappointment.”

“Well, your help is very much appreciated, Isa. Losing yet another genius such as yourself…”

“You won’t be losing me. Like I said, the only further contribution I could possibly make to your cause is donating my corpse to science,” Isa shrugged, “There’s no more to learn. I’d kill me myself, except that it won’t let me. You have to do it, sir. It won’t be difficult. I know that you’re empty inside by now, just like me. Just get a gun and shoot me in the head.”

“Please, Isa,” He started to protest, but then took a deep breath both in and out, then changed the direction that sentence had been going in as he went to the cabinet, “Just… call me Ryuuji, now,” He spoke softly, retrieving a weapon before walking over to Isa.

“Okay… Ryuuji,” Isa nodded as the other walked up to him and pressed the barrel of the gun against his forehead. He steeled himself, but then reached up and grabbed Ryuuji’s hand, “Wait.”

“Did you change your mind??” Ryuuji asked, sounding hopeful.

“No,” Isa replied, “I just realized that… there are a few things I need to say to you first.”

“Oh…” Ryuuji frowned, holding the gun at his side in disappointment.

“My goal, when I came here… I guess it was to surpass you. I’d always heard that you were a brilliant researcher, with a wonderful mind and intuition. I wanted to become better even than that, and what better way to surpass you than to first catch up to you, by learning from you?” He paused, shaking his head, “Tch. As if that could ever happen. I’m certain that by the time I even could catch up to you, one of us would be dead, and that would definitely prevent anything from progressing further. There’s no way I’d catch up to you if you weren’t the one teaching me. I realize that now,” He sighed, looking up at the ceiling, “And besides. Nobody can match what you’ve done… Ryuuji. You invented immortality. You truly did. It’s impossible to top that, especially in my current state of being.”

“Isa,” Ryuuji shook his head, then gave him a warm smile, “You’re the one who made all of this possible. You found the new sample, and without your help I never would have discovered all of these things. The clones, that was your idea. I may have discovered immortality, but you made it sustainable. I think… that I would absolutely call you a better scientist than me.”

“Well…” He looked away, “Thank you… Ryuuji…” He mumbled this, then looked at his supervisor again briefly before leaning down and grabbing the hand that held the gun, bringing it back up to his forehead and looking Ryuuji in the eyes.

He looked terrified, but determined. He was afraid of dying, he really was, but he knew that it had to happen. It was the only way, he felt, that he could be of any more use to Ryuuji at all. He didn’t like what the parasite was doing to his brain; not that he’d ever been a particularly morally upstanding person that the disposal of such things was jarring, but he didn’t like the feeling of not being himself. That he was not his own, but just some puppet to be manipulated as this parasite liked. As somebody whose entire work, life, and personality hinged on his mind, it was particularly unnerving knowing that his brain was under constant attack.

Ryuuji stared back at Isa, one hand sweating and shaking, but the one which held the gun was completely steady. He took a deep breath, readying himself. He didn’t want to kill Isa Souma, but what choice did he have anymore? Isa was right, anyway, about that emptiness. He knew that he could pull the trigger, and that it would just be one more thing in a very long line of regrets. It was really nothing huge, at this point.

He leaned in, kissed Isa, then before he even had time to react, shot him.

-

“Hello, people of the world. I can only imagine that you’re confused by this, which is understandable. However, I have coordinated this worldwide broadcast for a time at which most of the people who will be watching, should understand me. Anyone who doesn’t, well, I’m sure that my message will be translated soon enough. I’m here at Takaba Labs, the birthplace of… what you have been referring to as a ‘necroworm’, if you’ve been referring to it at all. I’m here to tell you that everything you’ve seen on social media about a zombie apocalypse… is completely true.”

“Well, that does make me sound an awful lot like a conspiracy theorist, doesn’t it? And what reason do you have to believe some guy who just so happens to be able to hijack the airwaves all over the world? You don’t have any reason to believe me at all, honestly. But you can’t deny the fact that the Hokkaido region has been mysteriously sanctioned off from the rest of Japan. Exactly the location that all of those tweets, all of those posts that get deleted within an hour of being posted, are coming from. So why are they getting deleted? Why has Hokkaido become, in essence, entirely off the grid?”

“It’s because the end of the world is happening. Right here, right now. I have no ulterior motives to lie to you about this. I’m not going to ask for money, or anything like that. I’m not going to leave this lab for the rest of my life. I’m not going to have any real power over anyone, and as much as I may, cliched as this can sound… enjoy chaos, I won’t be witnessing any of it, so there’s honestly no point to me telling you any of this, at least, from your perspective.”

“I’m telling you what’s going on because the government wants to keep it covered up, and I’m not quite friends with the government. Call it anarchy if you like, but that’s not what it is. Mm… maybe I’ll tell you more some other time. That’s right, this isn’t the only broadcast I’ll be making. I told you that the apocalypse exists, and where it is now… but don’t bother trying to destroy Hokkaido, or anything like that. It’s already spreading throughout the entire world. You can’t stop it. Besides, if I hear about any… rash decisions, I do have the power to spread the infection even quicker than it already is. I just figured I should let you know, that the world is ending. Maybe next time I’ll actually tell you something useful. Stay tuned, citizens.”

-

“Hello again. I’m impressed, it’s been a week and nobody’s tried anything… undesirable. I hear that the United Nations are trying to determine a solution to the issue, but the truth is that there’s no solution. Nothing… could possibly prevent this, at this point. Even if you erased every trace of the disease out there, I’d just start it up again. That’s right. I’m the reason this is happening. I didn’t create the parasite, but I am the one who broke quarantine and got it… spreading. The one who was doing research on the parasite, he’s dead now. Ryuuji Kawara. I killed him. Go on and just try to pass judgment on me. You can’t. The whole world is my hostage now. I’m giving you a chance to have at least a few lucky survivors.”

“You might wonder why I’d do something like this. I’ve heard the term, bioterrorism thrown around… but doesn’t terrorism usually have some sort of purpose? Some extremist agenda, in some form? I don’t have an agenda. I don’t want to rid the world of any particular religion, any particular race, nothing like that. Honestly, all that you all need to recognize is that… I am in control. This world, your world, it belongs to me now. That’s right, me. I’m just some nasty, mentally unstable… well, what should I call myself? I can’t say I’m really a person anymore. The same parasite that’s making its way through the world, I’m… immune. So I’m no zombie, really. I’m just… empty.”

“Go on and plead for your lives, but it won’t do any good. I don’t have a heart. I don’t have a cure, either. I can’t stop this, nobody can. All that you could even make me stop, would be the threat to rekindle the disease should it somehow be stopped. I won’t stop that, though, no matter what you say to me. As I was saying before, I don’t want to get rid of anyone in particular. I just want to get rid of… everything. I’ve always thought this world was awful. Rotten to the core. Now that I’ve got it in the palm of my hand… I will destroy it. Stay tuned, citizens.”

-  
“In case you couldn’t tell, these broadcasts are going to be a weekly thing. I’ll give you a moment to turn off your televisions, if you don’t want to hear me speak anymore. I hear that I frightened everyone quite a bit last week. Mass hysteria, actually. People on social media have made quite a few posts about being afraid of the endtimes. Silly, honestly. I’m not that threatening. It’s not like I’m able to destroy everything all at once. I have to wait until this disease wipes everybody out. Sit back on my heels and wait it out.”

“I can speed it up, of course. That’s what I’m holding over your heads, that’s why I have all of this control over the situation. I’m entirely untouchable, and I have the ability to quicken the apocalypse. That’s a lot of power for some kid to have. That’s what I am, after all. I’m barely even an adult at all, and I’m definitely not mature enough to consider myself one. I never will be, honestly, because I’m a peculiar sort of person. I had to grow up so quickly that I hit a point where I just couldn’t grow up anymore at all. I’m a stagnant person, and the pool is made of bad decisions. I’m just as awful as this world I’m in.”

“But… I do have one more thing to hold over you, in case you decide that the current hostage situation just isn’t worth enough to listen to me. If you don’t do as I say, then I will stop giving you advice. What, you might say, but I haven’t given you any advice. I have, of course. I told you about the disease in the first place, and I’m about to give you some more.”

“The parasite is transmitted through stagnant air.”

“That’s right, all of your failed quarantine attempts? That’s because moving air doesn’t spread this thing further. If the air is moving around too much, the parasite can’t survive in it. You won’t ever catch it through the air if you’re outside, or in a well-ventilated building, but hospitals… schools… and quarantine centers, of course, they’re all exactly the wrong thing to do when it comes to dealing with this parasite. Airplanes, too. However, I do not want you to shut off transportation between countries. If you do, then I will release the parasite in several more parts of the world, and stop making broadcasts altogether. I’m sure there will still be people wanting to travel. Enjoy themselves. See the world before it ends.”

“Just… I can’t say that tourism is a very good business in Japan right now. Not that I’m stopping you. Not that anybody should stop you. Plane routes should continue just as usual. Feel free to come here, if you have a deathwish. That’s my advice for now. I’ll give you more some other week. Oh, and keep in mind…”

“I might be lying, and you’d never even know. Stay tuned, citizens.”

-  
“Hello once again. This week, I’ve got something to share with you. Among the pleas I’ve received over social media on the necroworm hashtag, I received a letter that seemed sincere. I won’t read it aloud, because I’m not sure the author of it would appreciate the attention, but I will answer it here. The letter addressed me as ‘the man in the red scarf’ and asked me why I’m… like this. It questioned why I think the world is so awful. Asked what could have happened to me, to make me this heartless. It wasn’t accusing me of anything. Just wondering why.”

“I suppose I can answer that, it’s not such a tough question, and I suppose you deserve to know. Maybe once I explain, you’ll agree with me on how horrible this world is. Or maybe not. I don’t really care. In any case, I guess I should begin.”

“I’ve lived in an orphanage most of my life. I don’t remember anything about my parents, and I don’t really care about that either. I was alone, when I first got there, aside from the owner, who passed away soon after and handed it down to a pair of caretakers who didn’t care nearly as much. I was the first child to arrive there, and I remained the oldest as time went on. Eventually, I became competent enough that the caretakers moved out and left me in charge…”

“Oh, but before then, I did spend some time with one foster family. They passed every single background check, of course. Seemed to be the perfect people to adopt a child, and apparently that child would be me. I never really wanted to leave, but they told me my life would be… better. They were wrong,” Hitori paused, coughing into his hand, then showed his palm to the camera, sludge dripping, “Ugh, look at this. Disgusting. More on this later…”

“Anyhow, I’m not going to go into detail on what happened with that foster family. I can imagine that if you’re aware enough of the dangers of this world to fill in the blanks, then you will. Though, when I called to tell somebody what was going on,” He pulled off his scarf, then traced a scar along his collarbone, “They tried to kill me. I got out of there, of course. Got back to Heartful House, where everyone… well, all of my siblings, they were so kind to me. They didn’t ask too many questions about what happened, when I said that I didn’t want to talk about it. Some of the younger children kept giving me drawings, to make me feel better…” He was shaking slightly now that he was talking about the Heartful House orphans again, the only thing that could break his composure.

“That was when I knew that they were the only people in this whole awful world that I could trust. That was when I knew that I had to protect them, no matter what happened. I stopped feeling around that time, I guess. That was when my heart turned dark, but not when I lost it. I stopped caring about my own well-being, only for theirs. I gave my entire self up to the purpose of protecting the people I loved, the only time I felt anything was when I hurt myself, because sometimes the numbness was too much and I needed something.”

“I was like that for a while. I was not important, I am not important, I’ve never been important, and I will never be important. I will die with the world. How? Well you see, being immune to this parasite… isn’t such a great thing. It’s actually been trying to destroy me for a while now, though it can’t do much. Can’t do much, that is, unless your immune system is weaker than the average one. Which mine is. In the effort of keeping up with the increasing financial problems of the orphanage, I… contracted a certain disease. Again, if you can fill in the blanks there, feel free to do so. That, combined with the parasite, is the reason for that disgusting sludge I keep coughing up.”

“That’s right. I won’t even see the way the world ends, I won’t be around for it. I have some other people on my side, though, so by no means will the threat be gone when I die. Those people are the only people left that I care about. Somebody who was there for me, in more recent times, and… my one remaining ‘sibling’ from the orphanage. That’s right, all the others are dead. The only people I care about are right here at the lab with me. I guess that’s all you really need to know, about why I’m like this. Unfortunate events, and tragic losses, they’ve killed all empathy I ever had. If I even had any to begin with.”

“It’s for this reason that I expect no sympathy from you. I only said these things because somebody was curious, and I can’t imagine others weren’t. In fact, I know I will receive no sympathy, because I am not sympathetic. This disease, the end of the world, it will no doubt bring people the same pain I’ve felt, or even more. I don’t care. I don’t give a damn about anybody’s problems. Stay tuned, citizens.”

-  
“Mm, I don’t have much to say this week… How about, you all, go to sleep. No threats this time. Just a suggestion. If you’re not feeling well, it will definitely help you to feel a bit better… I’m sorry, I’m falling asleep a bit myself… Stay tuned… citizens…”

-  
“Well, hello. As you probably figured out last week, it turns out that the zombies’ weakened capabilities compared to that of normal humans… is only because they haven’t gotten enough sleep, and feel as if it’s unnecessary unless they’re told that’s why they feel so horrible. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing, like that. Now, it’s spread pretty far by now, hasn’t it? I’m sure that many of you have… felt the need to kill infected friends, family members, possibly even lovers. What a foolish decision. They’re still plenty intelligent, after all… oh, but you don’t want to get infected, or eaten, I forgot about how selfish humans can be.”

“Me, I was kind to all the zombies I ever knew. When the other orphans were all infected, I killed people every few months in order to feed them. If anybody out there is up to the challenge, caring for a zombie is a very simple process. They need to eat flesh every nine days, and it can be as little as the space between joints on a finger, and they need to be told to go to sleep each night. In fact, I’ve done a little something to… help you out, on that front. If anybody happens to have been unable to kill a zombie who’s special to them, and is keeping them tied up on a roof shelter or something along those lines, well, this could be of some use to you.”

“If you’re brave enough to leave the roof and go out on the streets, there will be vials of blood at your local library. This is all the remaining blood out of Ryuuji Kawara, who was also immune. I stored it in a fridge, what I could gather of it after I killed him, that is. If you inject it into your infected loved ones, well, they’ll still need to eat… but they won’t attack you. So you can hold onto them a little while longer. See, I’m not really all bad.”

“Some of you have been saying this is all a game to me, and you’re completely correct in that assumption, honestly. I wouldn’t have said it was a game, before, but I guess that I’ve let this whole broadcasting thing go to my head. I think it’s wonderful, that the world is ending in this of all ways. For everything to just… go up in flames all at once is common. This is much more interesting, and this allows for… survivors. Eventually there will be no infected left. They will starve to death, when they can no longer reach any humans to eat. Anyone left behind… I will gladly pass this world along to you. It’s going to stop being mine eventually, after all.”

“The thing is, I would prefer certain people didn’t survive to the end of the world. I want the clever people to live, those people who are good at living, people who work their way through the apocalypse and would come out on the other side… bettered. To succeed by their own merits of brain and teamwork, I do not want anyone to survive who would do so by other means. Might I give an example…” His eyes flashed with something strange, something different, as if there was a further meaning to what he was about to say.

“Francois Le Bel. Somebody like that, he shouldn’t survive… somebody who could just use his riches to act on every bit of advice I give, and find an easy method to live, made only by his money… no. I have heard that there are people who agree with me after all, who think this world is awful, who think that the end of the world is the perfect way to ensure that humanity is better off in the end. Well, I can’t say I care about humanity, but I do like the idea of people being… afraid. I was a good person once. I was friendly, really, I was the ideal young man that everybody wants their child to be like. But I was unstable. And this awful world broke me. It could happen to anybody, but if, at the end of days, you are afraid… you will not be awful anymore, because then this couldn’t happen again.”

“And you are awful now. I am awful, and each and every one of you is awful. This world inebriates everyone in it with the stench of misery. Someday, though, there will be no such thing as society. Everyone will think freely, and openly, without the perils of the world to shape them into the awful people we see. We are all liars. We have to be. That’s how it is, after all. Boy, I really do sound crazy now, don’t I? I think it’s the truth, though. When this is all over, I think the best and brightest will come out on the other side… and I won’t hate that world, but I won’t live to see it. I’m not driven by the idea of a better future. I just want to erase this rotten present, and that is all.”

“Do excuse my tangent. I make a lot of those lately… why, that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. I’ve lost my mind, and I’m dying. What I was trying to say, is that I’m sure that one of those other people out there, who would like to do away with this awful world… could kill him for me? I won’t threaten everyone with this task, no, it’s a petty dispute. Somebody will do it for me, though. I’m sure of it. Stay tuned, citizens.”

-  
“Ah, hello once again. I was told by a pair of people dear to me, that I seem calmer today. Less intimidating, really, and I suppose that’s good, though not for this broadcast. You were all afraid of me, you have been for a while, but since last week’s broadcast, I’ve been receiving something awful. Sympathy, which I’ve said that I don’t want, or deserve. Apparently I looked frail. Coughed more than usual. Spoke strangely… I guess I’m getting weaker.”

“Nage- I mean, my younger brother… no names here, no names. He told me that… I’m showing my true colors, finally. He said that all that hatred, everything I said about destroying the world, was a shell. A festering… a disgusting result of holding onto everything I felt. Ignoring my own needs for all this time… but that’s ridiculous. No, I’m just awful, horrible all the way through. There’s no such thing as he thinks of me. No overwhelmed, sad, and afraid person. I’m nothing but a villain now.”

“Some think of me as some sort of God. That’s wrong, that’s horribly wrong. I’m no intelligent visionary, either, I’m a nobody. I’ve always been a nobody. My life plan was to become a math teacher, and one day kill myself after I was sure that the people I cared about could handle themselves. I was just a nobody who never wanted to live, but I had too many things to do. So I stuck around. I hated everyone I didn’t care about, I always thought that everyone else in the world could just… die. So I guess I’ve always been horrible like this. I lost the people I wanted to protect, and with that, I got the opportunity to get revenge on the entire world for being… like this. So I took that opportunity, as I am horrid, nasty, awful person.”

“That is all I’ve ever been. I deserved all the pain I ever felt. I deserve this slow death that’s coming upon me. I would kill myself right now, except that it would not be… painful. It would be wonderful, to end it here, but I cannot. I need to hurt more before I die, I need to get the full scope of punishment for being such a terrible person. I am your enemy. I will always be your enemy. Stay tuned… survivors.”

-  
“Hey.”

“So have you all… forgotten, what I did to you? I told you. I’m the one who let the parasite out into the world. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were, it doesn’t matter what you heard. It’s my fault entirely, and I don’t feel sorry for it. I never once cared about the lives of anyone outside of the orphanage. Well, maybe one time. Just that one time. Just one person.”

“This disease was always just an excuse and an opportunity. I wanted to leave this awful world behind, but I figured, eventually, that destroying it was an even better course of action. What sort of person thinks that way? A terrible one, and that’s exactly what I am. It’s what I have been, and what I will be until the day that I die. I don’t blink an eye over killing people. I went on worldwide television just to say a bunch of threatening nonsense, to feel like I had some sort of power.”

“I’ve never been in control, though. Like I said, the disease was always going to spread. Maybe that’s why you don’t all hate me as much as you should? I never made good on my threat to make it spread faster, and now that the whole world’s been infected all on its own, I have nothing to intimidate you with anymore. I’m just some crazy, nasty, dying person on tv.”

“But still… all of this, from the beginning, I did it. I came on the air and I told you about every single dark and disgusting throught I’ve had. All my feelings about wanting to destroy the world, and yet you’re still showing me sympathy. You keep asking how I’m doing. If there’s any way you could help me, but there’s not. I’ll be dead and gone very soon, I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t see why you’d ever be concerned for me. It’s been clear from the start, that I wouldn’t live to see the end of days. I guess… the disease moved a little bit faster than I expected it to, after all. I’d say that… we are at the end of the world now. Not much has changed, though. The infected are already starting to thin out, with nothing left to eat. Everyone left is just too smart, after all… why, clearly, plenty of you are even intelligent enough to keep the world connected through these times. Then again, maintaining cell towers… can’t be that difficult, I guess. The first big storm to knock out some of that, though, will probably end some of that communication… Stay tuned while you can, survivors.”

-  
“Hello, one more time.”

“Somebody came up with a very convincing theory about me. Would you like to hear it? As a sort of storytime, I guess. If I’m the only real television you have left, I have to entertain somehow…”

“This story that someone decided to make up… they’ve collected a handful of proof that I do care about the world outside after all. For example, I told you how the disease was transmitted. Valuable information that you may not have had otherwise. I explained how to go about keeping a zombie alive and even functional. Provided the necessary resources. Useful to some people, I suppose. I guess that does mean I care a little bit, given how easily I could have withheld that information, or even left you to figure out that the disease existed only when it reached you…”

“Well, somebody close to me asked me to end the government’s coverup, but I guess that you’re right after all,” There was a long pause as he fell into a coughing fit between those words; he’d been coughing regularly for a while now, but this was the first full-blown fit he’d had on air, “Why am I… telling you this? Why would I bother telling you that I was, on some level, bluffing?”

“Because at this rate… this might end up being my last broadcast. That’s right. You were correct in worrying about me, I am certainly… experiencing more death, lately, than I’d like to be. Even if I am still alive this time next week, I’ll probably be in no shape to make a broadcast. So there you have it. I was bluffing, in some part. The thing is that, I don’t care. I’ve never cared. I always thought the world was awful and I wanted to leave it behind. The chance to bring an end to it… really, I think, this would have happened regardless of my efforts. The minute that somebody infected brought me to a hospital, it was over. There was no stopping the disease once it started to spread. I only wanted to wipe away… the guilt.”

“Losing the people you care about most, the people you swore to do anything and everything to protect… it’s a terrible experience. Truly jarring. It makes you feel like, any passing thoughts you had, any intrusive thoughts about hurting people, they don’t seem irrational anymore. The world that took those precious people from me, I really wanted to destroy it. So I did. I destroyed that world, but I always, I guess, wanted something better. I never gave a damn about humanity, but I still knew all along that… there were people out there who deserved to live just as much as my siblings, and maybe if people like them were to inherit the world…”

“Ah, but I’m getting off track again. I guess, all I’m really trying to say here is… don’t mourn me. The only way this ever could have possibly ended, was in my death. I don’t think, that fate ever had anything good in store for me. It’s a sinking feeling, that perhaps, no matter what choices I’d made or what the world did around me, I’d still be dead before I hit middle age. Like I said, my life plan had always included an eventual suicide. My life is worth nothing. Don’t be upset when I go. Just think about all the horrible things I said. The power trip I went on, and how I hurt you.”

“I’m a truly pathetic person, honestly. I always pretended like I understood what was going on, how the world worked. I wanted people to think that I could face anything calmly, and even when I snapped, I made sure it was in a way that only… made me feel empty inside. Not as wild as I was feeling, and maybe that was where I went wrong. I never understood anything, really. I shut myself up just to impress people, just to make people think there was nothing wrong. Because as far as they were concerned, nothing was. I was a model child. My problems were my own.”

“And here I am, telling this to every person left alive on the planet. Why, will this even get translated for all of you? Are there even enough people left? That’s… a good question, really. I guess when I stop broadcasting, you’ll all get the gist anyway. I’ll be gone. Heh.”

“All of this just got way out of hand. I was never really in control of anything, after all. There was nothing for it to spiral out of, I just pretended this whole time. I’d like it if everybody just forgot about me, really. I think that would be a better plan, than to leave condolences or anything like that. You never even knew my name. I was your enemy, never your friend. So what if I helped you with a few things, I…”

“I’m sorry, but I really do need to go. I can’t really say stay tuned this time, can I?”

“Goodbye.”

-  
Nageki and Kazuaki never watched Hitori’s broadcasts. They figured, by the way he acted, that they served as some sort of… way to let off steam, almost, so they let him be. It was like a diary that was open to the entire world, but for anyone who would ever actually speak to him to see it crossed lines. It just didn’t seem right.

Even without the broadcasts, though, they knew that things weren’t going well. Even without Hitori mentioning a word about it to either of them, they both knew that he was dying. It was obvious, when he spent most of the day sleeping, even more than he ever did before. When most of his waking moments were spent coughing up that disgusting black slude, and many of his sleeping moments too. He’d wake to his pillow covered in the stuff more often than not.

They still ate dinner together, though. Not that it was ever anything very interesting; Hitori didn’t like when Nageki cooked, and Kazuaki’s lessons in it had never progressed far enough for him to make anything beyond certain basics, but at least those basics were better than exclusively pre-prepared food. Usually, meals were quiet between them. Hitori never said much anymore.

This meal didn’t follow that pattern though. Midway through eating, after a particularly bad coughing fit of Hitori’s, Nageki and Kazuaki both lay down their forks and turned to look at him. The younger of the two spoke first, “Hitori. You’re… getting a lot worse, aren’t you.”

“That’s right,” Hitori sighed, crossing his arms and looking down at the table, “I… well, I was thinking that I might even have to say goodbye to you, before I go to sleep tonight…”

“It’s… it’s really that bad…?” Kazuaki questioned, immediately tearing up, though he tried to hide it in his hands. Hitori just grabbed them and pulled them away, looking Kazuaki in the eyes.

“It is. I’ll miss you, really, but it’s not like this will really be it for us… I’m sure of it. We stuck this whole thing out together, so a little bit of death isn’t going to hurt too much. As long as you want to, I’m sure that… someday, it will go on forever. You and me, and Nageki, and all the others… together, somewhere we’ll never be hurt again. You just have a little more living to do first.”

“Hitori…” Kazuaki whispered now, “I love you…”

“I love you too,” Hitori nodded, then sat back and let go of Kazuaki’s hands, smiling softly, “This is… I’m actually feeling kind of happy, right now. In my last few hours, at least, there’s one thing I can know for certain now. I guess that what I wanted… it did happen. I got everything I wanted to do, at least, since the incident.”

“Nageki, Kazuaki… this is the end of the world. And for a few hours more, it will belong to us.”


End file.
